charlie
On the topic of E. Coli - this was in my inbox today...
[i] Subject: Water & Wine Education
It has been scientifically proven that if we drink 1 litre of water
each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo
of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria found in faeces. In other words,
we are consuming 1 kilo of Poo. However, we do not run that risk when
drinking Wine (or rum, whiskey, beer or other liquors) because alcohol
has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and
fermenting.
[b]WATER = Poo
WINE = HEALTH
Free yourself of Poo, drink WINE!!! It is better to drink wine and
talk sh!t than to drink water and be full of sh!t.[/b]
There is no need to thank me for this valuable information, I am doing
it as a public service.[/i]
ChadM
Curiously enough, even here in the U.S., where bottled water sales are booming, a huge percentage of brands offer nothing but reverse-osmosis filtered wastewater. Obviously, that sort of filtration is good enough to yield drinkable water, but you won't see it in their marketing campaigns!
There is only one strain (out of hundreds) of the [i]E. Coli [/i]bacterium that causes severe problems in humans, O157:H7. Ordinarily, all of us have several benign strains living quite happily in our intestines. [i]E. Coli[/i] can definitely reside in water contaminated by raw sewage, and while it's possible it could wind up in bottled drinking water, it seems rather unlikely, even in Indonesia. Beyond that, the chances of it being the O157:H7 strain are fantastically remote.
If this debate is still active by that point (and I doubt it will be), I could have a bottle of Aqua tested after my next trip to Bali in November (of course I'd have to put it in my checked baggage now... sad). I'm a director at a company with an ISO-certified analytical laboratory and we've done a lot of analyses on bottled waters as the EPA (yes, the EPA initiated the mandate) tightened up the maximum limits of certain chemicals and radioactive nuclides (!!!) in commercially available drinking water. Oddly enough, in many cases, premium bottled water was no "better" than most municipal tap water. Of course, I'd drink Aqua over Bali tap water every day of the week and twice on Sundays; I'm sure you guys would all agree on that point! I've shuddered as I've watched the locals in the villages there drink handfuls of dirty water out of the little ditches/canals by the road. I can't even imagine what winds up there.
P.S. By the way, Charlie, your wine justification post made me laugh! I enjoyed it, but I assume it's all meant jokingly. There's no way 365 liters of water would ever contain 1 kg of [i]E. Coli [/i]bacteria... that's 2.75 gm, or 1/10th of an ounce, of bacteria, by weight, in every single liter, which is an incomprehensible number of the little buggers! I still think it's funny, and will definitely think of you with my next glass of wine! :)
tintin
Here is my Balinese “pollution story.” Some eight years ago, I had the pleasure to meet with an American hydrologist, who was staying in Nyuh Kuning with his family and some colleagues. He was studying the effects on the environment caused by the increase usage of the new hybrid rice, to the detriment of the more traditional rice, which in Bali has all but almost disappeared. The gentleman is very familiar with Bali, having been there many , many times over the past twenty years or so, in connection with several projects, including the study of the [i]subak[/i] system. He is fluent in Balinese, as I personally witnessed. During one of my meetings with him and his family, he engaged in a conversation, in Balinese, with the owner (a friend of mine) of the place where he was staying. Although my friend seemed to take that conversation for granted, he commented later on his astonishment at the American’s fluency in Balinese.
Anyway, of all the several conversations I had with this American hydrologist, what I remember most is what he told me about his next project, or rather his next “crusade.” Based on the preliminary analysis of the data he had gathered over a month of field work, which took him and his colleagues (and kids), up and down the water distribution system, starting at Gunung Batur, he had determined that there was sufficient “natural” fertilizer (in French, [i]merde[/i]) in the water to provide the hybrid rice with its needed nutrients, without the need to add the industrial-type fertilizer. :)
As you know, the hybrid-type rice yield per acre is vastly superior to the traditional varieties (but is not as tasty, say my Balinese friends), and produce three harvests per year. But there are no freebies in nature, and the hybrid rice requires large quantities of fertilizer and insecticide, which the Balinese farmers tend to apply, most of the time, with great abandon. Anyway, this American hydrologist’s findings showed that adding industrial fertilizer to the mix is both an unnecessary expense to the farmer and a serious health hazard to the community. But the industrial manufacturers were sure to resist his recommendations contained in his final report to seriously curtail, if not suppress altogether, the use of fertilizer in Bali, in connection with the use of these hybrid rice varieties. Ergo, his “crusade” against the farmers’ (not so) old habits and the financial interests of ADM and the rest of the manufacturers of these hybrid rice, and the adjacent production of fertilizers and insecticides
Roy
Chad writes:
[quote]If this debate is still active by that point (and I doubt it will be), I could have a bottle of Aqua tested after my next trip to Bali in November[/quote]
An excellent idea regardless if we are still discussing this topic or not. Your results would make for a great new topic string anyway...so please do this test and please post your findings.
Daniel, I remember this hybrid third harvest thing back then too. You’re right about the Balinese not liking it...not as tasty, but some even thought it was against the God Dewi Sri and “pissing off mother nature” was not in their best interests.
The scary thing to consider though is that as more and more sawah fall to the developer’s hammer...will this become a necessity...a third harvest? A fascinating story and thanks for reminding me of it.
