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Ah, the long sunny days of summer. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, veggies and fruits are flourishing, and bacteria is thriving.
This season brings big fun and an equally large potential to get sick with particularly disgusting diseases. Hot and humid temperatures are bacteria’s favorite environment. They’ll infest your food, skin, and innards if you give them a chance. Here’s where they lurk, and what you can do to fend them off:
Air Conditioning: Bacterial crud, mold and other nastiness are happy to make their homes in your air conditioning filters. Breathing them in can cause headaches, bronchial and sinus infections, and are a particular issue for people with allergies and asthma. To prevent this festivity, don a nice surgical mask and gloves then deep clean your AC filter (or replace it) every three months. (You may need to clean your filter once a month, and then change it every three months, depending on your AC system).
Food: Picnics, barbeques, street fairs – yay! Stomach aches caused by foodborne pathogens – boo! We tend to get really careless about food preparation when we’re cooking – or eating – outside. The very young, old and anyone with a compromised immune system should avoid food that could have been compromised by improper storage or insufficient cooking. The worst offenders: ground meat that is not thoroughly cooked and eggs. If it’s supposed to be cold, store it in a cooler full of ice, no matter how shady the picnic table may be or how retro-cute your picnic basket is. Educate yourself about food safety here, and remember the #1 Food Rule: If in doubt, throw it out.
Ice Cream: Listeria is an odd bacteria that likes to live in cooler temperatures (most bacteria want warm, most environments), and it is especially fond of setting up its communities in machinery – like the soft-serve ice cream machine. Skip the frosty treats if you are pregnant (Listeria can cause miscarriages) and you may want to ask the owner of the ice cream truck when they last cleaned the equipment. It’s up to you whether you choose to believe whatever answer you get.
Skin fungus: Fungi (Trichophyton) causes athlete’s foot, jock itch and ringworm along with other lovely skin/hair/beard irritations. You get it by coming into contact with surfaces that harbor the fungus (public showers and gyms are fungal playgrounds, as are towels, bedding and socks) or the skin of someone who is infected. You can also infect yourself if you scratch the itch and then touch other parts of your body. Cover your feet to avoid infection at the gym and pool. Wear socks and underwear that absorbs moisture during the sweaty season, and make sure your sneakers are dry. If you often have itchy feet, you might want to apply antifungal powder on your feet, especially during the warmer months.
Swimming Pools: What could possibly harm you when you’re relaxing in a stew of human body fluids? Right. Sweat, urine, fecal matter … no pool is pristine, but some are worse than others (your own personal pool, unsullied by any other human, might be clean depending on your personal habits and bladder control). To make it even better, when all of that stuff comes in contact with chlorine you get chloramine compounds, which is responsible for the eye sting we experience in pools. You may also be swimming with beasties such as the cryptosporidium parasite, which can cause diarrhea and can lurk happily in a chlorinated pool for almost two weeks.
And there’s the Coxsackie virus, a common ailment in summer months which is usually caused by fecal matter leaching out of swimsuits and into swimming pools. Coxsackie can cause hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in children – symptoms include small blisters on the tongue and inner surfaces of the mouth, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, often accompanied by fever. Best precautions: don’t drink the water you’re swimming in, choose public pools wisely, drain and then expose backyard kiddie pools to four or five hours of sunshine regularly.
Ocean: If the flesh-eating bacteria doesn’t get you, the sharks and jellyfish will. Oh, wait – that’s only true in Florida. In general, treat any cut or abrasion that you get while swimming in the ocean or walking on the beach with great care, and head to the doctor if the wound gets red, feels warm or is showing signs of infection (puss, for instance). Read the useful shark attack prevention tips here. And if someone does get stung by a jellyfish, don’t feel compelled to urinate on them – a splash of vinegar or seawater is just as effective and far less disgusting.
Your Mouth: A single mouth can be home to more than 6 billion bacteria, an impressive number when compared to 7.3 billion total human population of earth. Those billions of oral bacteria live in diverse communities, where they go about the business of life: being born, working, feeding, defecating, mating, and dying – yes, all this is happening right now in your mouth. And it’s happening year-round, not just in the summertime, so make sure to take consistent care of your teeth with good at-home hygiene and regular dental cleanings and checkups.
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*Discount Health Program consumer and provider surveys indicate average savings of 50%. Savings may vary by provider, location, and plan.
