Interesting point.
The desensitization tail may have been more left-skewed than I was even aware of.
There’s some evidence suggesting that it might be possible to develop resistance to acute arsenic toxicity by regularly consuming small amounts of arsenic. The plot of the classic short story “Fly-Paper” by Dashiell Hammett deals with someone who attempts this.
It very much appears to be one of those “don’t try this at home” things.
Yes, my bad. To get back to topic:
I won’t.
I’ve never really been out in the sticks, but I’m reasonably well-travelled, and this is one of the basic tips everyone should know.
I’ve been to North Africa (living with the locals for several week at a time, not in some fancy hotel) on three occasions and I never got sick, precisely because I steered clear away from tap water. I’m pretty sure I swallowed some while taking showers, though but that’s pretty much impossible to avoid.
Did anyone ever have an issue with water when cleaning contact lenses?
I was a contact lens wearer for years while traipsing around the world, and always carried bottles of whatever solutions I needed - I don’t think I ever used tap water, except maybe to clean the empty case and thoroughly dry before putting lenses in.
I was once in Mexico with a colleague who made a big point of drinking the local water. She became so ill that she couldn’t attend any of our professional activities and had to delay her flight home, and her supervisor had to delay hers as well to stay with her. Someone where she was staying kindly put all her things in a box to mail to the US. Fortunately, I’m who took the box to be shipped, because I decided to organize the contents against damage and therefore found that her passport was in the box.
TLDR; don’t drink the water.
A point that I was going to make.
If you buy bottled water, especially from a stall, be sure that the seal is intact. Some vendors will happily refill bottles from the tap.
I grew up in West Africa back in the 40s/50s and if you had looked in our American-style fridge you would have seen a number of gin bottles. They had lever tops which made them ideal for storing boiled water for drinking, We bathed and cleaned our teeth in tap water but never actually drank it.
So is there an actual significant risk associated with drinking tap water in most of Mexico nowadays?
They don’t have as high standard as US tap water, but then US bottled water doesn’t have the same high standards as US tap water, and I don’t think of that as a risk.
Is there actually evidence there is dangerous quantities of pathogens in the Mexican water supply? Rather than anecdotes of people getting sick.
Yeah, upthread I was being catious about how to address this, but: in reality, go to an all boys boarding school in the third world.
I did. I can challenge anyone to any eating competetion. I will take on all challengers in tbe fried egg category. You will struggle in the “liver with onions” category, and absoulety fail in tbe “mid-afteronn tea” cateogory.
All they need do is: be an adolecent In Zimbabe in tbe nineties, installed in a boarding school.
Then they would know!!!
This is so cool. There is actually a word for what my Siamese do.
But just to respond to the OP, when I first moved to Delhi in the 90s for a two-year job, I brought a hand pump chemical purifier. I used it for the first week or so before I got tired of pumping several liters a day. So I decided to bite the bullet and drink the local water. I never regretted the decision
The majority of bottled water in the US is tap water. Study Shows Nearly 64% of Bottled Water in America is Just Tap Water: Here’s the Brands | nyruralwater.org
Although bottled water manufacturers must be doing something differently, because every bottled water brand I’ve tried lacks the throat-burning, nauseating chlorine taste of municipal tap water. And I hear that bottled water somehow lacks flouride, which has caused much pearl-clutching in the dentistry community.
That is part of the question, but if you are planning on drinking any tap water over an extended period, it’s not only pathogens you need to be concerned with. Heavy metals (especially lead) are also a concern, where pipe systems are very old.
Yeah but the reverse would not be possible, if a water company just brought a bunch of bottled water and piped it to your home that would not meet the required standards
^^This. Mexico is much like the US was back in the 60’s, with companies dumping industrial waste wherever it was convenient. And its never been cleaned up.
That and you never hear of a boil water advisory in Mexico due to a broken water main. Because the boil water advisory is permanent. Just because tourist and upper class areas have filtered water supplies doesn’t mean that the water is safe everywhere you may go. Its common on TV there to see ads for anti-parasite medication for a reason.
The general idea of getting used to the water, pathogens in the water, or contaminants in the water, really needs mechanism to justify.
No doubt that the locals tend to become inured to some of the pathogens. Which can be justified by an immune system that has become attuned to the specific versions, and likely mops them up just enough faster than a foreigner’s can do, and avoids continual misery.
Lots is nasties to be found in the wild. Giardia is endemic nearly worldwide. People who have had it range from mostly immune to chronic sufferers(which is bad). A first time infection can be brutal.
I remember spending a month in Egypt a couple of decades ago. I had a permanently unhappy tummy but nothing terrible. One of our colleagues there who was living there on rotation from Texas (working in oil exploration) told of spending the best part of a week living in the bathroom not knowing which end of his digestive tract to point at the toilet bowl next. I remained with a grumbling tummy after I got home, cured with the usual antibiotics for Giardia. (As my doctor pointed out, testing for it is mostly a waste of time, as a curative round of drugs is easier and more useful.)
Other things like immunity to heavy metals are mostly a myth. Arsenic is a well known one. Part of the myth comes from the fact that arsenic metal is not adsorbed all that much. So you get lunatics that deliberately eat it. As a salt, it will cheerfully and swiftly bring about your demise. (Dorothy L Sayers’ detective novel Strong Poison also revolves around gaining an immunity as a key plot point. Erroneous as it is. )
Venoms, such as snake venom, are huge nasty proteins, so we can train the immune system to recognise them, and create antibodies that will bind and neutralise them. This is how most antivenins are made. We just use horses to do the work, and then try to purify the useful antibodies from their blood. Given how inexact a science this is likely accounts for just how brutal to the recipient antivenins can be. Whilst there are stories of snake handlers who have attained some level of resistance to snakebites, there are similar stories where ultimately it didn’t help.
(Sniffs) Iocane powder. I’d know it anywhere.
Travelling in Southern Africa, India and Indonesia, I just drank the water. I figure with my background in boarding school food pretty makes me immune to everything from guardia to typhoid. Across multiple third world countries I survived.
I would never let my kids do the same.
One unexpected source of infection is ice cubes. You can have your bottled water but the ice cubes come from local supply.
Nailed it in one. Ask any Peace Corps or AID worker about the folly of trying to acclimate to local water or veggies. It’s a fool’s errand.
This was the standing order for Cairo restaurants.
This is widespread in Indonesia too. Makes economic sense, that vendor will never see you again.
Are there cases of people using new caps with intact locking rings and jamming them down on refilled bottles so they look like factory bottles?