For what purpose would you willingly use raw water? Drinking? Cooking? Bathing? Join Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, as they look at more instances of raw water usage, both in the past and modern history (including some history humanity is making right now). Learn how John Snow, one of the founders in the field of epidemiology during a period when Miasma theory was prevalent, found Patient Zero in 1854 after cesspools contaminated raw water supplies with cholera. How did raw water help bring an industry to the point of economic collapse around 1925? In what ways have history and modern natural disasters impacted the current safety of raw water in Puerto Rico?
As this journey through the history of raw water comes to the present, and with a better understanding of the progression of water safety, a brief examination is made of some current events relate to raw water contamination. Discover how wells dug by the United Nations to prevent exposure to surface water bacteria created debilitating new problems for residents when they consumed too much of a good thing which was naturally occurring in their drinking water, and what treatments are in development for those issues. Learn how the lack of access to safe and fresh water has made many experts declare Gaza Strip to be uninhabitable and a ticking time bomb for the region.
Cholera and typhoid, cesspools and oysters, this episode has lots of raw information for you! Learn about the ways the search for clean water continues to play into modern stories of humanity (history in the making), and how our history informs what outcomes we can expect. So sit down with a glass of raw water and oysters on the half-shell while you listen to this latest Horrific History episode through one of your favorite podcast services (iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and more). Just remember, no squeam allowed! Join us next time when we’ll examine booby traps in history!
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Some of our favorite resources from this week’s episode:
- UCLA Dept. of Epidemiology, 2
- Atlas Obscura, 2
- The Guardian, 2
- US National Library of Medicine, 2
- CDC, 2, 3
- MayoClinic
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine
- Vox
- WHO, 2, 3, 4
- CNN, 2, 3, 4, 5
- MSNBC
- Clinical Infectious Diseases
- BuzzFeed
- Forbes
- Grist, 2, 3
- Puerto Rico Limpio
- NPR
- EPA, 2
- NRDC
- Reuters, 2
- Washington Post
- Phys.org
- Haaretz
- Oxfam
- Ohio State University
- Time
- Johns Hopkins Magazine
- Wiley Online Library
- Gideon Online
- Islamic University of Gaza
- The Jerusalem Post
- Science Direct, 2
- Journal of Historical Geography
- Public Health Reports
- Food Safety News
- Jama Network
- NY Times
- Wellcome Library
- California Digital Newspaper Collection
- New York History
- Koshland Science Museum
- Cornell University
- Sciencing
- National Marine Fisheries Service
- Journal of Food Protection
- City of St. Helens
Commercial break music by Dead but Dreaming.
Slideshow photo credit: Paulisson Miura Orla do Porto, Cuiabá, MT, Brasil. via photopin (license)
Blog photo credit: ssilberman Skeletal Fluorosis via photopin (license)
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