From Eurekalert.org

Contact: Jonathan Patz
patz@wisc.edu
608-262-4775
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Waterborne disease risk upped in Great Lakes

MADISON — An anticipated increased incidence of climate-related extreme rainfall events in the Great Lakes region may raise the public health risk for the 40 million people who depend on the lakes for their drinking water, according to a new study.

In a report published today (Oct. 7, 2008) in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, a team of Wisconsin researchers reports that a trend toward extreme weather such as the monsoon-like rainfall events that occurred in many parts of the region this past spring is likely to aggravate the risk for outbreaks of waterborne disease in the Great Lakes region.

"If weather extremes do intensify, as these findings suggest, our health will be at greater risk," according to Jonathan Patz, a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor of population health and an expert on the health effects of climate change.

A primary threat to human health, says Patz, are the extreme precipitation events that overwhelm the combined urban storm water and sewage systems such as those in Milwaukee and Chicago, resulting in millions of gallons of raw sewage being diverted to Lake Michigan. Adding to the risk throughout the region, Patz notes, is the growing concentration of livestock operations where heavy rainfall can wash large amounts of animal waste into the rivers and streams that drain into the Great Lakes, the world's greatest concentration of fresh surface water.

"It's the perfect storm," notes Patz. "Deteriorating urban water infrastructure, intensified livestock operations, and extreme climate change-related weather events may well put water quality, and thereby our health, at risk."

Waterborne diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria, viruses and parasites are among the most common health risks of drinking water. In 1993, Milwaukee experienced an outbreak in city drinking water of the parasite Cryptosporidium that exposed more than 400,000 people and killed more than 50.

Patz, who is also affiliated with UW-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies' Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, conducted the study with Stephen Vavrus, a climatologist and director of the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research, also part of the Nelson Institute.

Changes in regional weather patterns and, in particular, an increase in the number and intensity of severe rainfall events are predicted to accompany global warming. Climatologists have already cataloged a decades-long trend toward more tempestuous weather, says Vavrus.

"We have seen an uptick in the incidence of severe precipitation events in the last couple of years, but this has been a trend for decades," says Vavrus, noting an increased frequency of both major storms and total precipitation in the late 20th century. "And we are expecting climate (in the Great Lakes region) to change significantly in the future, so we'll very likely see an increase in these extreme precipitation events."

Climate change, scientists know, will prompt extremes of the hydrologic cycle, causing intensified precipitation as well as drought. Using the best available computer climate models, the Wisconsin researchers found that southern Wisconsin is likely to experience a 10 to 40 percent increase in the strength of extremely heavy precipitation events, leading to greater potential for flooding and the waterborne diseases that accompany the high discharge of sewage into Lake Michigan.

Previously, Patz led a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-funded study linking outbreaks of waterborne disease in the U.S. to extreme rainfall. That study, published in 2001, showed that two-thirds of waterborne disease outbreaks between 1948 and 1994 were correlated with heavy rainfall.

The new study, say Patz and Vavrus, points to a need to strengthen pubic health infrastructure and improve aging urban drinking water and sewage systems, and to improve land use planning to reduce the amount of runoff that occurs in urban areas during major precipitation events.

"This is where climate policy, land use policy and public health come together," Patz argues.

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The new study, which was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was co-authored by Christopher Uejio of UW-Madison's Nelson Institute and Sandra McLellan of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

-- Terry Devitt, (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu

Tags : Great Lakes, climate, water, sewage, drinking water

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Just chocolate milk: Delicious chocolate milk. (image courtesy of goatopolis on flickr.com)What’s that? You aren’t up on “jenkem” yet? It’s only the next big thing in chemical abuse, my friends. What exactly is it? Oh, we’ll get to that.

A little background first – “jenkem,” as far as one can tell, originated in Zambia, where it was used as a substitute for other inhalant drugs, like gasoline or glue (“Genkem” is an African glue brand, and “Jenkem” is thought to have derived from that as a generalized term for inhalants). Jenkem seems to have first surfaced in the mid-nineties, with several periodicals at the time reporting its abuse among street children in Lusaka, Zambia.

But, again, what is it? Well… uh… basically, jenkem is the collected gas of fermented human excrement and urine.

…

The gas supposedly acts as a powerful hallucinogen. The exact active components of jenkem aren’t known because, surprise surprise, no organization has yet put much research into the psychoactive effects of poop gas. It is likely, however, that the inhaled methane and hydrogen sulfide gas may play a role in jenkem’s physiological effects.

As you might already have guessed, a drug like jenkem is a symptom of utter poverty and social desperation. That jenkem caught on in a place like Lusaka, where AIDS and poverty have created tens of thousands of street children, is, sadly, perhaps not entirely surprising. It does not seem very probable, however, that a drug like jenkem would find much of a foothold in the United States, which is why its appearance in the news of the last couple weeks has been particularly interesting.

Last week, multiple local news crews across the country, um, got wind of a leaked sheriff’s bulletin from Collier County, Florida, warning of the use of jenkem among American teens. Stations began running stories warning parents of this “dirty new drug,” and urging them, in at least one story, to “wait up for them (their children) at night and not let their kids go to bed until they have seen them and smelled their breath.” A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency even made the statement that “there are people in America trying [Jenkem].”

This storm of reaction is remarkable in that, despite the news stories and the DEA warning, no one has actually seen any direct evidence of the use of jenkem in America.

The original Collier County bulletin, it turns out, was based on one Florida teenager’s “trip report” posted on a website, with pictures of himself doing jenkem and a description of its effects. The kid, however, recently admitted that it was a hoax, and that the “jenkem” pictured was made using “flour, water, beer, and Nutella.” Probably not delicious, but not jenkem either.

Organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, as well as websites that specialize in documenting psychedelic experiences, admit that it’s possible that a few individuals in the U.S. may have experimented with something like jenkem, but are extremely skeptical of the claim that it has become anything more than that. The Partnership for a Drug Free America stated that they had not even heard of jenkem.

Pretty much everything about jenkem reeks of an urban legend.

Hallucinogenic drugs can be extremely dangerous, it’s never a good idea to get sewage close to your mouth, and while hydrogen sulfide (sewer gas) can be tolerated at low levels, higher concentrations (like, say, from huffing it) can be deadly poisonous. So, as bizarre as something like jenkem sounds, one shouldn’t forget how dangerous it is.

Even so, it seems like this reaction to the supposed appearance of jenkem in the U.S. had less to do with the actual danger of the substance than it did with the media’s love of scare stories, and a strange sort of “moral panic” over a vaguely perceived drug threat.

Fermented sewage. Weird.

Salon.com has a pretty good article on the whole thing here.

Tags : drugs, the horror, sewage, media, hydrogen sulfide

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