"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
news:428d0786$0$38045

Is salmonella in bird ****, necessarily?

I believe it's very common. It's very easily spread between birds,
and it's harmless (to them).

I pick up our hens' droppings to throw them on the garden (they do it a
lot
on the paths, idle things). by the time I get back in the house I suspect
I'll have forgotten about washing my hands ...

There's unlikely to be enough on your hands to cause you a problem
directly via ingestion, even if you immediately eat a sandwitch
without washing your hands first. Chances are you are regularly eating
small amounts of salmonella bacteria regularly without any problem.

I'm sure I am. I'm sure we all are.

However, if you handled any food which then sat around such that the
salmonella could multiply on it before you got round to eating it,

Well, quite. I'm well aware of how salmonella spreads! In fact it's not all
that easy to get even a sub-lethal dose.

But the question was about drinking water from the butt :-) There's no
problem from salmonella even if does have bird **** in it.

Look, if I were thirsty I'd drink anything. I've drunk water from a burn
in
the Lowlands and nasty brackish water from the fens.

Again, low levels won't do you any harm and I doubt it can multiply
in clean water.

Quite.

Your water butt might get filled in one rain storm

It doesn't take a storm, I'm always surprised at how quickly it does get
filled.

which washes the last 2 week's bird **** off the roof. If you drunk
a lot of the water, you might go over the harmless dose (which would
seem to be around 1 million bacteria for salmonella).

There's no way I could drink a buttfull. What's more, the salmonella has to
be in the droppings - and capable of withstanding (in your scenario) two
weeks of being dried and blown about (into the air which we breathe,
incidentally).

I think that the poster who mentioned bird **** and salmonella might have
been confusing it with e-coli. I'm not worried about that either by the
way.

Sea water is something
I've had lots of mouthfuls of but it's not good to drink. I must have
also
swallowed pints if not gallons of swimming pool water and we all know
what
goes into that. And it wasn't always loadedwith anti whatevers.

Humans don't normally harbour salmonella AFAIK. There are other
nasties though.

I know that. I didn't mention salmonella.

I really believe you can be too fussy. I once visited a friend who washed
grapefruit before peeling and eating it ...

Yes, it's actually important to expose your immune system bacteria
and viruses to keep it working. I suspect the obsession with
cleanlyness which some people have nowadays is responsible for
the increase in a number of diseases in recent years, particularly
alergies. I just saw a scare tactic advert for Detol (IIRC) on the
telly saying "did you know your child's high chair has a thousand
times[1] more bacteria than the floor?". So what?

[1] actually I don't remember what the claimed figure was.

I understand your point though. And how did they know?

Mary
--
Andrew Gabriel