As the Worm Turns (A Small, Strange, Not-That-Consequential-but-Interesting Story that is Just Slightly Longer Than This Headline)

ROTFL!! As I read this, I’m picturing all the teachers (including principals) on their desks, screaming because there’s a mouse running around the classroom.

Boo! Lol! Nervy staff.

I wonder.. Are they going to come up with a special codeword/color for this kind of incident, which they can announce over the intercom? “Attention All Staff, we have a code chartreuse in the west hall!”

It would never occur to me that the worm came from the water supply. I would assume right away it came from a student.

Was it a garden variety worm that some kid dug up and put it in the toilet because he didn’t know what to do with it?

Was it a parasitic worm? If it was, then you have a health problem of a different sort that probably has nothing to do with the water supply and everything to do with making sure kids wash their hands after going to the bathroom. When we first got our dog from the found she was really sick and threw up & excreted these nasty worms. I was OCD for days about washing myself.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone consulted an entomologist or even did a Google search to find out what kind of worm was in the toilet. If my kid were in that school, I’d want to know about the worm, not the water supply.

I don’t know where else to post this, but this is a really outrageous story:

A high school student – — just days after his father dies — has blood shot eyes. The school assume it’ because of drugs and suspends him.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/14/whos-high-a-school-suspends-a-student-for-bloodshot-eyes/?iid=WBmostpopular

@Roberto: What we did in elementary school (grade 5 if I recall) was set our classroom clock ahead by 30 min. For the next 2 days we got to have recess early and got out of school earlier. 3rd day we got busted. Not red handed, but our teacher set the clock, and were told if it happened again we would all be in detention. I think she caught on when we were outside playing for recess, the other kids were still in their classrooms. If I remember correctly, he was a bit of an air head, but nice. He went along with our pranks.

We also did the replace the chalks with toothpaste, chalk wedged into board erasers, re-arranging the seats (he didn’t do roll calls for attendance, he had a seating plan and looked to see if that seat was occupied). Ahh…to be a free-range kid again. No worries, plenty of fun, and oodles of learning experience…of the real world.

Well I’m sure everyone knows that the toilets and the water fountains share the same plumbing! Unreal!!

On a different note, my wife and I are participating in a walk to raise money for Epilepsy. If you can take a moment and check out http://bit.ly/teamtaubman

Thanks!
Erik

Was probably a pinworm. Extremely common, extremely transmittable. Our pediatrician said that every kids gets them, but not everyone realizes it. Kids don’t wash properly after using the toilet, get pinworm eggs on hands, touch doorknob/crayons/bus seat/whatever, infection spreads. Aren’t really harmful, but cause itchy behinds because they live in the rectum and come out at night to lay eggs around the anus.

(You’re welcome for the appetizing explanation : )

Yes, drinking fountains are one way it could be transmitted–but you can’t shut off every surface in the school, which are all just as likely to be places where the eggs are spread. The pencil sharpener, the scissors you grab from the basket in art class, the secretary’s phone to tell your mom you forgot your lunch, etc.

If it was a garden worm, that seems like Christmas in July for the kids! What a gift.

But giving the administrators the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was something that *could* potentially be a parasitic worm from the water supply, shutting off water fountains seems like a sensible precaution. What I don’t get is why they would only stop people drinking at the school – if the supply is suspect you’d think the whole water district would need to take precautions.

Reminds me of a movie, but I can’t remember the name where someone dropped a candy bar into a pool… cue up the “Jaws” theme… and once it was spotted there was panic, everyone ran out, and they drained the pool, and were bleaching the walls of the pool when one of the workers found the candy bar!! haha!!

A bit on the correlation between activity and your brain

@suzannerevy The movie was “Caddyshack.” (I remember the little girl going “doodie,” ha ha.) I actually remember the Lacey Underall character more, but hey–I’m a man, what do you expect, ha ha.

But at any rate–oh my goodness, what a bunch of paranoia. What an overreaction. It’s actually gotten to the point to where I don’t know how much more I can keep reading this site so often–and that’s not a discredit to Lenore Skenazy at all, I am totally pro free-range and absolutely LOVE what she stands for, but it’s hard to read about things like this without getting quite upset about it.

In some ways, it reminds me of what we complain about with the mainstream media–too much stressing of the bad & not enough pointing out the good. No, I am NOT saying this site is now stooping to the same tactics as the Nancy Grace and Today show, NOT at all, but I think we should have a “free range success” section, where we share stories of how we free-ranged and had a good day with it.

And yes–watch out for the worms, ha ha.

@ebohlman

So, you’re saying that this kid stole a Qu’ran?

When I was in high school Biology, we were learning about tapeworms and my teacher brought out a jar full of worms and had us passing it around, then “accidentally” spilled it on a desk. Everyone started freaking out… And then he laughed and told us it was just soggy Ramen noodles.

Scott, it’s pretty near impossible for a worm to come through the water supply. OTOH, plenty of people are carrying them in their intestines.

sounds like a good storyline for As the world turns provided that it wasn’t cancelled haha.

The only answer to this crisis is: Porta-Potties.
I’ve never seen a WORM in one….if that’s all they’re concerned about.

“Scott, it’s pretty near impossible for a worm to come through the water supply.”

There’s not really extensive filtering of most municipal supplies. The primary method seems to be dumping chlorine to kill what is already there. I’ve seen certain things come through the water supply. Pebbles, slime, rust, black goo.

And there was the fun story last week about the tiny crustaceans that are in the entire NYC water supply and can be found in every glass of NYC tap water you drink. Seems these little guys are added intentionally to reservoirs because they eat the mosquito larvae.

markm – “Scott, it’s pretty near impossible for a worm to come through the water supply. OTOH, plenty of people are carrying them in their intestines.”

We have a vacation cottage with it’s own water supply and we were told that worms in the water was a sign of a breakdown in the filtering and purification systems. Admittedly that’s a small system, not a big municipal one. But unclean water is one of the primary ways to get worms when you’re in the wilderness so it doesn’t stretch my credulity that municipal systems would have to deal with them too.

But Scott, are they actually harmful or are they just there? We get all bent out of shape because we can measure stuff in infintesimal amounts, 1 part per billions. But just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s going to hurt us. Our bodies are amazing machines that are able to get rid of stuff it doesn’t like.

“District administrators responded immediately and coordinated with the New Mexico Environmental Inspection Department, New Mexico Department of Health and the city of Alamogordo.”

While reading this story it just felt like a parody. A joke. What a crazy world this has turned out to be, it seems that the school district were CYA (covering their butts) by going to such extreme measures to ensure no upcoming lawsuits by angry crazed sue-happy parents. I could almost picture them at the ‘worm meeting’ discussing ways to make this go away quick while making them look good. Man raising his hand-‘Uh sir, why don’t we order bottled water for all the kids until we get the go ahead that the worm in the toilet is just a worm and the water is OK?’ ‘Good one, ah whatsyourname? psst. quick, order those bottles pronto and make it my idea’
Ridiculous. Thanks for posting though, your not ridiculous!! Love the site =)

you guys want a success story? I’ve got one to share w/ the class….

last spring, when i first started reading this blog, I posted about a coworker’s phone call I overheard. Her 13 year old daughter was home alone for the 1.5 hours between school and getting picked up by dad. It was a spectacularly beautiful day, and she was calling mom to ask if she could please, please, please go play outside. Mom asked if there were other neighborhood kids outside.. “yes”. were there any adults in sight? “no…..”. She told her daughter to stay in. (she also refused when her daughter wanted to ride her bike to school)

I’ve been working on her ever since…. pointed out this site to her, told her many of the stories you’ all have shared… finally pointed out to her that her daughter will be driving a car in 2 years for heavens sake!

so, let’s see… since then, she has allowed her daughter to walk to the grocery store w/ a friend (1/2 mile?)…. let her go w/ a friend to the school football game… and this year is allowing her 9 year old son to walk from bus stop home by himself. She’s even comtemplating allowing the daughter to go to mall with a friend and do her own back-to-school clothes shopping! baby steps, perhaps, but very very real ones — and very big ones for her!

Back in the early 70s, head shops used to sell this highly concentrated scent called “liquid incense.” One drop would make an entire room smell like strawberries or whatever. A half-ounce bottle dumped in a corner of the typing lab would shut down the entire business wing for a day, if it happened to be the day of a typing test. (Mind you, this was back when a passing grade was touch-typing 35 wpm clear on a MANUAL.)

We also used to leave Zip-Lok bags with a dozen or so Tic-Tacs in them where a paranoid administrator who was convinced the entire student body was on drugs would find them. As I’ve said before, send in the clowns, with drug dogs borrowed from the Highway Patrol.

Re: school bomb threat. I’m sure that people will say that if we aren’t vigilant about that sort of thing, we make a bomber’s job easy. But if you are able to cause havoc, disruption, and possible injury (sunstroke, etc.) for the cost of a simple phone call… sounds easy to me.

Shucks, I missed my chance to get a day off work: I found a little worm on my desk this morning. I just put it in the garbage and to think I could have gotten the university shut down entirely!

LOL

Helenique – I hardly think one worm in one toilet is an infestation. And if said worm had been flushed with no one else’s knowledge that it existed, then what?

Robin – I didn’t mean to imply that one worm was an infestation. The school at the moment has an unknown worm of unknown origin. I see it merely as an indicator that they *might* have an infestation, since the eggs that I thought were the real problem would not be visible. If someone had flushed the worm and the water supply actually was compromised I would have thought they wouldn’t have found out until there were a lot of people from the school diagnosed – and by then the source of the contamination may have gone.

But my question was more because in the comments people don’t seem that concerned about the water being drunk if it is contaminated. Where as I’ve always thought that was pretty bad. So I was wondering if I’d understood that correctly.

Maybe the parasites that are normal in the States aren’t that serious and my view is colored by reading about contaminated water in Africa. Or maybe I’ve just really misunderstood how the whole worm thing works. I was just really surprised by the responses.

“are they actually harmful or are they just there”

The crustaceans are not harmful unless you are orthodox jewish or muslim in which case you’re not supposed to eat shellfish.

The claim was made that it is unreasonable for me to suppose that worms could come through the pipes, presuming that municipal water is somehow finely filtered or something. It’s not though, the main way city water is made clean is by the addition of chlorine. Small animals, pebbles and worms can get through, including tiny crustaceans for example which is a recently well known example.

I don’t get the responses either. I immediately assumed pinworms or something similar. They are very contagious. I think I had some around age 10 for a couple of weeks. But I probably got them from playing with other kids in the mud (OH NO!). If they found parasites, they should probably be disinfecting the school doorknobs, bathrooms, fountains, etc. and/or sending some info home to parents.

But I have to say, and not just because I work in water, that clean water and sanitary sewers improved world life expectancy probably more than any other factor, including the gazillions of dollars spent on creating and dispensing modern medicine. (I think I heard this from a couple of science profs.) Kids in many poorer areas die of contaminated water by the thousands. We do not overcome every threat, especially when already compromised by malnutrition or illness.

@Robin:
Agents measured in infinitessimal amounts can be harmful in your water. There is good science behind this. Probably, they will just cause a few people to die of cancer 30 years from now or will contribute to the erosion of aquatic life and concentrate in the nearby wetlands. Chemicals probably won’t make you sick immediately.