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chloe
11-13-2009, 11:30 AM
By Amanda Butterfield

WEST JORDAN -- More than a dozen swimmers from two high schools got sick during a statewide swim meet. One high school principal says as many as 200 students from the 20 high schools that competed ended up sick. Health departments from two counties aren't sure how they became ill.

Bingham High School swim coach Andee Bouwhuis says her team got sick during an invitational meet with 700 other athletes in St. George last weekend.


Bingham High swim coach Andee Bouwhuis "I had a girl and a boy, both, who came up with some stomach issues, that they felt like they were going to throw up," Bouwhuis says.

It happened at the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center toward the end of the meet. The coach figured it was nerves or improper nutrition before a race, but it got worse.

"They started to develop a fever, and so we sent them home with their parents, thinking they wouldn't have any other issues with it," Bouwhuis says.

Of her 50 swimmers, Bouwhuis says 13 got sick, including the coach herself.

"It was frustrating. We ended up postponing our meet that we had scheduled for today against Riverton just so we would have a healthy team and we wouldn't run the risk of infecting other athletes in their pool," Bouwhuis says.


Sand Hollow Aquatic Center, St. George UT Was it cryptosporidium? The Washington County Health Department says know; officials there tested the water.

Other swim teams, like Viemont High School, did not get sick, but 10 swimmers from Copper Hills High did. Now Bouwhius is just anxious to get her kids back in the water, healthy again.

"Most of my kids are back 100 percent. We have one who is still out," she says.

Washington County took stool samples from the sick Bingham swimmers and is working with Salt Lake County now to figure out what had the kids so sick. Bouwhuis says they haven't heard back on the results yet.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8653524

oh yeah we are always having problems with our water in utah, including our swimming pools, first article from today, article below from 07 every year contamination.......It's causing a major neurosis in me :eek: I don't want to drink, bath or shower anymore.....peeuuw right???
In the realm of micro-organisms, cryptosporidia are the Navy Seals.

"They're tough," Ron Tobler, environmental health program manager for Utah County Health Department, said of the fecal-borne parasite responsible for more than 1,700 cases of cryptosporidosis in Utah since June. "They're intended to survive."

Guarded by a thick, outer shell, cryptosporidia, often referred to as crypto, can thrive in hostile conditions where other microbes succumb to the elements. In properly chlorinated water, Tobler said, most germs last only two minutes, but a crypto could conceivably survive up to six or seven days.

Crypto aren't just hard-shelled; their small size makes them difficult to filter, said Dr. Joseph Miner, director of the Utah County Health Department. An average crypto measures 4 microns in length, or about four-millionths of a meter, which enables the parasite to slip by most current pool filters, Miner said.

Swimmers can then accidentally swallow crypto-contaminated pool water and suffer severe symptoms, including diarrhea, stomach cramps, fever, nausea and vomiting — as occurred earlier this summer when so many people were infected by the parasite.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695217669,00.html