[Greenbuilding] Legionnaire's in water wall features

[RT]

On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:15:05 -0500, john bone  
<johnbone at gateshead.plus.com> wrote:

> Ah, that is because you bodies immune system is not "at a low point" of
> efficiency, due to age or other reasons.
>
> It is called Legionnaires as it was a bunch of oldish "American
> legionnaires",

Well, y'see John, I'm not exactly a spring cockerel ... certainly old  
enough to remember hearing the original news stories surrounding those  
legionnaires' deaths, when they broke.

And up until she passed away 57 days ago, we had my 100 year-old Mom  
living with us in this house and my guess is that she was older than any  
of those Murrican legionnaires.

(In the same breath though, I should probably mention that my Mom never  
took any (Occidental) medications (not even an aspirin), didn't need  
eyeglasses to read small print that I would have difficulty making out  
with my computer-screen-compromised eyeballs and was still pedaling her  
stationary bike the week before her passing).

Which brings me back to my earlier speculation about long-term exposures  
to small doses of otherwise dangerous micro-organisms perhaps being  
beneficial in helping our bodies to develop immunities.

My Mom spent the first 40 years of her life in old (ie pre-communist era)  
China and as anyone who has traveled to China in the modern era will  
attest, the conditions there (even with "modern" knowledge about germs,  
disease transmission etc) are far from being anything Auntie Septic from  
the West would approve of.
Legionella bacteria in water there would probably be considered the "wimps  
on the block" by the other organisms swimming around with them (again a  
speculation on my part).

I'd often speculated that her amazingly good health was due in large part  
to her having been exposed to all manner of scary micro-organisms in her  
days back in China, helping her body to develop a strong immune system  
that helped to provide her with the longevity we enjoyed.

OTOH, here in the West where children are raised in conditions where a  
micro-organism of any sort is at risk of being assaulted/killed by a  
plethora of chemical cleansers/sterilisers/anti-bacterial solutions,  
cleaning machines etc. we have far too many sickly human specimens with  
all manner of health issues and whose prospects for longevity probably  
aren't very promising.


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a  >
(manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply")