If a person was in the wilderness with no way or knowledge of how to sterilize water would he eventually build up a tolerance to the pathogens and parasites commonly encountered and eventually enjoy it just like the other animals in the forest or jungle?
How long could this take?
It depends on the pathogens, and on the person’s immune system.
I watch these survival shows and it seems every time they take a chance and drink untreated water they get ill. I have drunk from streams and creeks and lakes and even ponds since I was a little kid and have never gotten sick. I am starting to think I might be somewhat immune, I never gave it any though until I started watching all these shows. I think in my thirties I started being a little bit more careful but I still don’y hesitate to drink from a stream.
Until fairly recently, people used to drink whatever water they came across. I’d think the location of the water in relationship to the location of the nearest collection of people would determine the odds of its being infected with a human-capable infectious pathogen. A spring bubbling up or a creek fed by snow-melt is probably fine to drink. Drinking water from a river downstream of a large city, not such a good idea. Obviously people can build up immunity- tourist’s disease is an obvious example.
It’s not about tolerance, it’s about luck. This article from REI gives interesting perspectives on both sides.
Do you wear a seat belt? A bike helmet? Safety glasses? This is exactly the same, it’s risk assessment.
For me, I’ve had norovirus, I don’t need to experience that again. So I take precautions.
Ditto. I don’t drink any questionable water. However, if it came down to die of dehydration vs. risk it and I was a long way from any germ-spewing people, I’d risk it. Before we discovered sanitation, death from water-borne illnesses was a big problem. Cholera for example. I guess if you managed to survive it you’d build up a resistance.
I didn’t manage to post the link to the article I mentioned. Here it is.
The animals in the forest or jungle too are often infected by pathogens and parasites from the water they drink. So are humans living in areas without access to clean water.
I believe you can build up a resistance to the least dangerous local bacterias (the reason why westerners end up with turista while locals drink the same water and are just fine), but the most serious parasites and such make a lot of people seriously ill (or dead) regardless of whether they have been drinking local unclean water for all their life or not. Also, whatever resistance they have can be genetic rather than acquired (because they are the descendants of generations of people who, by chance, had a natural resistance to such or such pathogen and survived the infections).
Of course it also depends on what pathogens are present in the area. You’re going to be better off drinking from streams and ponds in Europe than in Africa if only because we don’t have some of the nastiest parasites they have. And also because artificial pollutants are much less likely to end up in rivers (raw sewage, for instance) nowadays in developped countries. Living in Paris, for instance, the water of the Seine isn’t deemed fit for human consumption, and doesn’t looks like it is, but I believe you could in fact drink it without much risk of getting ill.
The REI article does not say it’s luck, and there is an immunity/tolerance component - that’s why REI mentions personal hygiene.
[QUOTE=REI]
Always carry some treatment method to disinfect any water source you consider even faintly suspect.
Be observant at water sources. If you’re in a remote, high-elevation, infrequently traveled area and you see no obvious signs of human or animal activity, the water is quite probably clean and instantly drinkable.
Be diligent to maintain good personal hygiene when in the wild. Health complications often believed to be caused by ingesting contaminated wilderness water are usually the result of poor sanitation practices, particularly dirty hands.
[/QUOTE]
I spend a lot of time hiking in the backcountry, and I do exactly what the REI article suggests - it’s based on solid research. If I’m in a remote area, drinking from a stream that’s clearly coming down from high elevation where there are no people and few animals, I usually won’t purify. But anywhere near people or horses (high volume poopers) I’m extremely careful.
The research that I’ve seen is studies of water quality and giardiasis in the the Sierra Nevada that show some interesting things:
A large minority (I think one estimate was 20%) of the human population carries some strain of giardia asymptomatically. Most cases of giardiasis among backcountry hikers are contracted from hiking partners through poor hygiene practices, not from the water supply. So it would seem that this is certainly an immunity/tolerance issue. So, if hiking in a group, establish rigorous hygiene procedures or just obtain water and cook separately. And don’t shake hands with people you meet on the trail!
The purest water was not found in babbling brooks, it was found in the top few of inches of still bodies of water that are exposed to intense sunlight at high elevation. UV sterilization kills everything.
Worst case of illness I ever had was after a salad at a very upscale restaurant in New York City; the center of world finance. Bad pathogens will attack the locals just as much as Westerners. The problems are local pathogens; ones which natives have immunity to but visitors might not. This is the cause of most travellers diarrhea. Which is why visitors to developed world also fall ill, and why you might fall ill in a different city in your own country.
@Riemann: I believe what you said is also the reason why militaries are so strict on hygiene maintainance in the field.
I had a bout of tourista in Tokyo, one cleanest places in the world. I recovered in a couple of days.
Honestly? Never, you would not build up a “tolerance”.
That said, they may be able to build up some immunity to some of the pathogens but would most likely have some symptoms or be sick for a period.
Parasites are another story and depending on what they are can be very dangerous.
Your stomach’s acidity may be your best defense so if you were to drink in small enough amounts you may be able to avoid some of the hazards.
There are different types of “bad water”.
Water that has a slightly different mix of benign bacteria than you are used to can make you feel sick for a short time (traveler’s diarrhea). Changes to diet, sleep schedule, drinking patterns, etc. can also be a part of this effect (a lot of Montezuma’s Revenge is caused by too much cervesa rather than any pathogen). This can be adapted to.
But giardia, E. coli and amoebas? No, you are not going to adapt to that. People who live in areas with water contaminated with these pathogens get sick all the time. This is why diarrheal diseases are the number one cause of death for children. If you drink contaminated water, you will eventually get sick, perhaps very sick.
Some people like to claim they can drink the water in XYZ and not get sick. Those people are either lying or remarkably lucky. I’ve seen a lot of people stay in areas with unsafe water. Those that take scrupulous care with their water rarely get sick. Those that take the occasional risk sometimes get sick. Those that drink whatever without worrying are invariably those that come home and say “I was sick all of the time.”
After watching all these TV shows I am becomming more and more paranoid. As a kid we drank from a flood control channel that ran right through the city. There was about a 1 mile stretch that had concrete and the water would slowly drift through there maybe 1/2" deep or less before it turned back into a dirt bottom creek. I imagine the UV rays from the sun had enough time to kill anything that might have been harmful.
I wouldn’t count on it.
Depending on what wilderness you’re in, you can drink the water for years and years and never get sick. It doesn’t mean your immune.
Personally, I don’t have much tolerance for country music. YMMV.
I was living in a remote valley in Hawaii for a few months. The whole time I was drinking from a waterfall and never had any problems.
One night I woke up spewing out both ends. Against all odds, a helicopter flew over and one of the people I was with somehow signaled it to land. The helicopter landed on the roof of the hospital and I was brought into the ICU. I had come down with Leptospirosis. Rats in the area carry it in their urine. The doctor said that if I hadn’t been rescued that morning, I would have died.
Took about a week to recover.
I think this observation might be relevant. I was reading the July Scientific American last night and there was an article about how lab mice, which have been raised in a nearly sterile environment, might not be good models for human response to drugs because they have an underdeveloped immune system. They compared them to wild caught mice which had a much more highly developed immune system and were studying the question of whether these might be better models. Interestingly, but perhaps expected, was that if you put some wild mice in the same cages with the lab mice, the latter’s immune system got more mature quickly.
This suggests that you will acclimate to less than pure water (not without getting sick a few times, presumably). Of course, all bets are off if you use a source contaminated with, say, cholera.
On the other side lots of people drank beer (probably light beer) instead of water. Probably healthier all in all.
Most water in rural areas of North America is drinkable; use caution in places like immediately downhill or downstream of an animal farm or industrial site. There are many hikers on the Appalachian Trail who “sip & dip” without filtration or purification the entire length of the trail – modern thinking is that those who get sick on hiking trails get sick from toilet related dirty hands, not from contaminated water.
In Central America, the admonition “Don’t drink the water” applies to locals, too. They do not become immune; they drink treated water.