Word: cryptosporidium
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...world. Yet half of all Americans worry about getting sick from tap water contaminants, according to a 1995 survey by the Water Quality Association. As if to underscore the point, the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the nation's 300 largest municipal water suppliers to begin testing for the cryptosporidium parasite, which poses a risk for people with weakened immune systems...
...know precisely what's coming out of your tap is to have your water tested. The EPA's Safe Drinking-Water Hotline (800-426-4791) offers names of testing laboratories in individual states. The hot line can also answer technical and health questions such as "How much cryptosporidium is too much...
PATHOGENS: These include bacteria, viruses and protozoa such as the cryptosporidium that struck Milwaukee. These sicken 900,000 people a year, says the N.R.D.C. report, and kill perhaps 900, usually those with weak immune systems (the very young and very old, AIDS sufferers and organ-transplant patients...
...culprit, test results show, is a tiny parasite with a big name: cryptosporidium. The oocysts (parasite versions of eggs) of this pesky protozoan can be removed only through filtration. Unlike bacteria, they are not readily killed by chlorine. Furthermore, the tests that water-purification plants routinely rely on to detect biological contaminants do not pick up the presence of cryptosporidium. What makes the parasite especially nasty, explains microbiologist Dean Cliver of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is that the oocysts do not hatch in water -- in this case Lake Michigan water -- but remain dormant until they are swallowed by some...