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CRITTERS


INSECT ASIDES


Bugs in and around the water can just be a nuisance, yet some carry serious disease. However, a small dose of common sense can keep swimmers safe, fi nds Elaine Howley.





Aſt er nearly 10 hours’ driving, all Bob Needham, 59, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, wanted to do was enjoy a weekend swim-


training with friends in a Northern California lake. But aſt er his fi rst swim of the weekend – to prepare for his impending solo swim around Manhat an Island the following month – Needham climbed into his car in a most uncomfortable state. He and a handful of the others had picked up the dreaded ‘swimmer’s itch’. “It was pret y bad,” Needham says. “Sometimes I have allergic reactions to things and I know the feeling when I start having a systemic reaction. I could feel that happening. It started late in the day and was boiling up, so I got in the car and drove home.” Needham says he went directly to an urgent care centre, and was prescribed steroids. Darren Miller, 28, of Pit sburgh, Pennsylvania, had a similar experience in the same lake.


Miller said: “I did a couple of hours in the lake and felt fi ne, but I noticed a couple bumps, and the next day I swam again. It was about 24 hours later when they started showing up. Miller took the red-eye fl ight back to the East Coast and it was during this that his reaction really set in. “I was just incredibly itchy the whole way,” he says. He was told by a doctor that he’d picked up swimmer’s itch, the body’s reaction to an infection caused by the water-borne schistosomatdae protozoa. The organism spends part of its life cycle inside birds and part of it inside freshwater snails, which are common in many lakes and ponds all over the world. Some individuals react more strongly to a bout of swimmer’s itch, oſt en because of an immune response primed by other allergies, or a history of exposure to the toxin at hand. “I’ve heard that people who are allergic to a lot of things get swimmer’s itch worse,” Miller says. “I have seasonal allergies, so


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