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Disease-Causing Organism is a micro-organism that can make you sick if
you eat it, inhale it, or come into contact with it (get it on your
skin, or in your ears, etc). Standards
for disease-causing organisms in Louisiana are based on a group of
bacteria called fecal coliform bacteria.
These bacteria are used for detecting the level of
disease-causing organisms and untreated sewage in water.
Fecal coliform bacteria come from intestines of warm-blooded
animals. However, there can
be problems with using these bacteria as indicators of sewage levels
when there are large numbers of wildlife near a waterbody.
Some waterfowl use the Barataria and Terrebonne Watershed during
the winter and can be the cause for high levels of fecal coliform
bacteria in waterways. Why
does it cause pollution? Disease-causing
organisms contaminate water. They
can make you sick if you play in, swim in, or drink this water.
They can also make you sick if you eat raw shellfish, like
oysters, that are contaminated from being harvested in contaminated
water. Disease-causing
organisms do not affect everybody the same way; they are most dangerous
to people who have weak immune systems or are frequently sick. Not all bacteria and viruses will make you sick, but this
website tells you if the waterbody you are interested in using has
problems with disease-causing organisms. How
does it get into water? Disease-causing
organisms get into the water from untreated sewage. When people go to the bathroom they create waste called
sewage. Every home, school,
and business is required by law to have some way of treating its sewage
or transporting it to a sewage treatment system.
In
a city, the sewage is transported to a large sewage treatment plant.
Sometimes raw sewage can contaminate water when storms flood or
break the large ponded treatment areas, or when the transport pipes
break. Also, people let
their pets make waste (poop) on sidewalks and the street. When it rains, their pets’ waste runs off into storm drains
and out into bayous, lakes, and bays. In
an area that is outside of the city, a person who owns a home or
business has to have their own sewage treatment system.
Just like a car, a sewage treatment system gets old and breaks.
In addition, sewage treatment systems can fill up.
Just like a car, they have to be maintained.
If the system gets too old, breaks, fills up, or doesn’t treat
sewage well anymore, the owner should replace it so that raw sewage
doesn’t contaminate the water. But
frequently these individual treatment systems do contaminate water. In
rural areas animals are sometimes grown for food.
When these animals leave their waste on the ground it can get
washed off during rain storms into bayous, lakes, and bays.
The more animals are put into the same area, the more disease-causing
organisms from the waste can go into the water. What land uses are the source of this type of pollution in the B-T Basin? |