A nice dip in a public swimming pool or hanging out at a water park can mean you're swimming in water filled with fecal parasites that not even chlorine can kill, the Centers for Disease Control is warning.
The crypto parasite, which can cause diarrhea for up to three weeks, can survive for up to 10 days in well-chlorinated water, USA Today reports, citing a CDC report released Friday.
Other illness-bearing agents also can survive for some time, including hepatitis A, which can live for about 16 minutes, and the Giardia parasite, for 45 minutes, notes the CDC.
According to the CDC's report, crypto exposure caused 4,232 illnesses from 2009 to 2017, and people, especially children, who swim too soon after having a case of diarrhea, can spread crypto.
"Unlike maybe norovirus or E. coli, which cause diarrhea or vomiting for a couple of days, you can have diarrhea caused by crypto for up to three weeks," said epidemiologist Michele Hlavsa, one of the report's authors. "That's not fun."
The CDC said the crypto-related illnesses have increased by 14.3% each year from 2009-2016 but noted that the number of outbreaks is probably underestimated.
Hlavsa said the best way to prevent illness is to keep from swallowing pool water, and she suggested taking test strips to pools to test chlorine levels before getting in.
"We want to keep crypto out of the pool in the first place, and the way we do that is not to swim or let our kid swim when we’re sick with diarrhea," she said.
The CDC recommends anyone who has had diarrhea to wait for two weeks before going swimming.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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