Comments on: Guadalajara http://www.fogel.ca/2007/12/02/guadalajara/ soapbox and search engine spam Mon, 30 May 2011 18:56:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Dr. E. Moreno http://www.fogel.ca/2007/12/02/guadalajara/comment-page-1/#comment-34305 Dr. E. Moreno Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:50:14 +0000 http://blog.fogel.ca/2007/12/02/guadalajara/#comment-34305 Hi Mike, Enjoyed reading about your trip to Guadalajara. Those cylinders on top of every roof in the city are not water filtration systems; most people in Guadalajara could not afford such a thing. They are water tanks. The city's water system does not provide enough pressure to ensure that the water reaches the second and third floors of houses and buildings with sufficient presure--hence the universal need for a combination of an electric pump and a tank (and gravity does the rest). When I grew up in Guadalajara in the 1960s, middle calss people would drink bottled water (distributted in 6 Gal. glass bottles house to house by several drinking-water companies). Today, the city claims the water is safe for drinking. This is true in theory. In practice though, such a claim does not mean much, because the water stays stored in the water tanks you saw on top of roofs for at least a few hours --and some times for days, if no one is draining the pipes. Even a few hours of water stillness in the tank on the roof (heated by powerful solar radiation) are enough to give a chance to E. Colli and Salmonella bacteria to grow and reproduce and contaminate the water in practically any tank exposed to the exterior and heated by the sun. A big percent of the working-class population have developed some sort of immunity to these bacteria, but still suffers from one or two infections per year, which they think is no big deal. Most visitors to Guadalajara who come from the temperate zones of the planet have been instructed to avoid drinking tap water. However, many visitors from the North still get infected because they do not realize that adding ice to their bottled drinks is not safe. In many cases, ice is not made from bottled or filtered water. There's the secret. Back in the mid 80s I went back to visit in Guadalajara from Kansas. I went with my girlfriend and I admonished her not to drink anything with ice. Girls from Kansas need a lot of ice, though, and eventually she 'forgot' to specifically ask for drinks with no ice. After two enjoyable weeks in good health, she got infected and ended up dehidrated in the ER. After she recovered, she went back to drinking water and sodas with ice in every restaurant and home she went. But now she had acquired immunity and did not get infected again. She had payed her dues. Enrique Hi Mike,
Enjoyed reading about your trip to Guadalajara. Those cylinders on top of every roof in the city are not water filtration systems; most people in Guadalajara could not afford such a thing. They are water tanks. The city’s water system does not provide enough pressure to ensure that the water reaches the second and third floors of houses and buildings with sufficient presure–hence the universal need for a combination of an electric pump and a tank (and gravity does the rest). When I grew up in Guadalajara in the 1960s, middle calss people would drink bottled water (distributted in 6 Gal. glass bottles house to house by several drinking-water companies). Today, the city claims the water is safe for drinking. This is true in theory. In practice though, such a claim does not mean much, because the water stays stored in the water tanks you saw on top of roofs for at least a few hours –and some times for days, if no one is draining the pipes. Even a few hours of water stillness in the tank on the roof (heated by powerful solar radiation) are enough to give a chance to E. Colli and Salmonella bacteria to grow and reproduce and contaminate the water in practically any tank exposed to the exterior and heated by the sun. A big percent of the working-class population have developed some sort of immunity to these bacteria, but still suffers from one or two infections per year, which they think is no big deal. Most visitors to Guadalajara who come from the temperate zones of the planet have been instructed to avoid drinking tap water. However, many visitors from the North still get infected because they do not realize that adding ice to their bottled drinks is not safe. In many cases, ice is not made from bottled or filtered water. There’s the secret. Back in the mid 80s I went back to visit in Guadalajara from Kansas. I went with my girlfriend and I admonished her not to drink anything with ice. Girls from Kansas need a lot of ice, though, and eventually she ‘forgot’ to specifically ask for drinks with no ice. After two enjoyable weeks in good health, she got infected and ended up dehidrated in the ER. After she recovered, she went back to drinking water and sodas with ice in every restaurant and home she went. But now she had acquired immunity and did not get infected again. She had payed her dues.

Enrique

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