Body in hotel water tank

Absent don't get me started on Listerine.
However, halitosis is not an invented symptom - it is real and shouldn't be ignored, the commonest cause being moderate to advanced periodontal (gum)disease which if left untreated will lead to loss of teeth.

Or, my pet hate, antibacterial wipes.
It is easy for us though to feel confident in our immune systems. They are magnificent. A miracle of evolution on a par with the brain.
But our generation has been the most disease free in history. Go back to your grandmothers' times and there was no child vaccination, high rates of TB and no antibiotics - infections of all kinds were very common. Their wonderful immune systems did not always prevail. Microbes evolve more quickly than ours.
There is also the point that our immune systems do age. This is why pneumonia becomes common in the long lived. Keep carrying those water purification tablets greatnan.
Our chief medical officer was talking about the threat of antibiotic resistance - people in 200 years may also see us as the most infection free generation in history.

Greatnan Like the makers of Listerine – originally a disinfectant for floors and other hard surfaces – inventing a condition called halitosis (not that people didn't sometimes have smelly breath).

And you don't need special cream for your underarm skin, or douches for your 'intimate areas'. Manufacturers are adept at creating a demand where none exists.

Bags many years ago I was very sick after drinking from a stream high up in in Glencoe. But I have no real evidence the incidents were related.

Our bodies are generally well able to resist loads of potentially infectious agents. cuts grazes etc etc.

Yet again I will say. "Blame the advertisers for this obsession with germs" Don't constantly use bacteriacidal sprays on work surfaces. Good hot soapy water does fine.

Ditto! I've never bothered with bottled water either! When I was in Venice at about 18/12 old I was given watered wine as the water wasn't safe! I've continued with that but without the water

I refuse to panic about bacteria/germs - I have survived for 72 years and even when travelling in Third World Countries have never had more than one short bout of a stomach upset in Egypt. My mother had a relaxed attitude towards hygiene, and I believe I have developed a robust immune system. I would far rather risk the water in the high mountains where I live than risk getting dehydrated again, which happened once when I got lost in the forest, without water, and had to walk in very hot weather for about six hours. My bp dropped to about 65/50.
I do carry water purification tablets, but I have never used them in the Alps. ]
I wouldn't drink water from a standing lake or pool, especially one used by boats.
The children who are 'detolloed' to the nth degree are the ones most likely to succumb to illness.

Of course, if my manuka is substandard I can't even depend on the placebo effect .

I think it's because they put honey into them?

Blimey, jane, whatever next?!

And Bags you could pay a heavy price for playing the bagpipes apparently
www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4835558/OAP-John-Shone-catches-bug-from-bagpipes.html

You are right about the tap water bags it is not sterile and it is fine for most purposes inc washing grazes. people boil it for baby's bottles but the chances of them catching anything from tap water in this country are minimal.

No reason to think we have immunity to either cryptosporidium or giardia unless we have had an infection maybe?

www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/888/page/44044 - watery diarrhoea for a month? - no thanks
www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Giardiasis/Pages/Symptoms.aspx - two years of diarrhoea???? no thanks again. These are not trivial diseases.

But I give up. I'm going to bring some wood in. I will take precautions so as not to get cuts on my hands or splinters. Gloves it's called. But even if I do sustain such an injury, the risk of anything nasty that my immune system can't cope with will be small. Trying to avoid every risk to perfect health is silly and obsessive as well as impossible.

Or passed through the right kind of water filter. I'm not talking about those lime removing ones that southerners use (I did too in Oxon).

Not straight out of, at any rate. Might be OK boiled.

Ski-ing in open water.... so there were boats on it (pollution), and there will have been things living in it and dying in it and rotting in it.

Not a mountain stream, then.

I am not advocating drinking water out of lakes that people use for leisure activities.

Good grief. Some perspective, please!

A friend's son contracted necrotising fasciitis when he sustained an open wound while water skiing in fresh water in Cheshire. Only quick thinking by an A&E medic who recognised it, saved his leg and possibly his life.

Well, jane, necessity being the mother of invention, I live in hope that we will find a solution to such problems where there is a high risk of infection such as during and after childbirth and other times when there are deep internal wounds, or even easily infected external ones.

Maggots.

Alcohol.

Something we haven't discovered yet.

Meanwhile, I still think we are getting over worried about little every day things that rarely cause any problems.

Yes, jane and anno. I'm not 'in denial' about any of that. My forehead story is not about unclean water. We have clean water in Scotland, so water to wash my graze would have been fine. The first aider was talking rubbish.

In Haiti they clearly need more portable water filters such as the ones in Shelter Boxes. Their problem is real and huge. Their water supply has been contaminated. Drinking water from a high up mountain stream that is running over rock, or through certain kinds of rock, is not a huge problem. Okay, there's a small risk of infection, but it is small, as the experience of many mountain hikers makes evident.

In Norway, long distance cross country skiers carry a wooden cup attached to their person somehow with which they pick up some snow for a drink. I have such a cup and have used it thus.

High mountain stream water is cleaner than lower stream water and lake water because it hasn't been anywhere yet except in the sky. This is not difficult to inderstand and it's all I'm saying.

Bags Septicaemia could result from a simple cut in the pre-antibiotic era and was very difficult to treat. It was the prime cause of women dying in childbirth - this is what we could return to if new antibiotics aren't found soon.
we may have become frightened of life, but sadly we have also become complacent.

Bags, cholera was brought under control in this country only by the provision of a clean water supply. Now it is rife in Haiti because in the aftermath of the earthquake the water supply has become hopelessly contaminated by - it is thought - UN troops from Nepal, a country where it is endemic. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20024400

Well, yes, but a shallow skin graze is not major surgery (or even minor!). My point is that we are getting excessively frightened of... well... life!

The couple in the story have had a life adventure which has not harmed them in any way. They don't need compensation.

So licking a graze clean, if your tongue can reach it (challenging on one's own forehead) is not such a daft idea . Could have spat on my hanky, I suppose. Actually, if The First Aider Designate had not pounced on me (something to do, something to do! ), that's probably what I would have done, or just given it a dab with my hanky. And it would have been just fine. After all, I've survived such treatment so far.

Actually there is a reason to fear germs.
Because of increasing antibiotic resistance, in 20 years' time, routine surgery could be highly hazardous and we could be back in the pre-penicillin era, the Chief Medical Officer has said.

Saliva contains antiseptics Bags called opsonins.
Just for future reference