Stomach bugs lurk in sand

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Kids who burrow in the sand prone to catching icky infections
Kids share their sand castles and beach tunnels with nasty germs including E. coli and Enterococcus.

Beach fun for most kids includes burrowing in the sand and being buried by friends and siblings. Parents figure that as long as the kids are within sight, they’re safe. But a new study shows that some pretty nasty bugs may lurk in those glistening, gleaming grains.

The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found that digging in the sand raised the risk of diarrhea by 44 percent in young children — those under the age of 11. And kids who were buried in the sand were 27 percent more likely to develop diarrhea than those who weren’t.

Bonnie Shimp, who takes her infant grandson and a friend’s 6-year-old on outings to the Jersey shore, was sorry to hear that beach sand isn’t as benign as she thought. Shimp has many fond childhood memories of digging in the sand and being buried by her brothers.

“This makes you feel like you need to tell your child, ‘Don’t dig in the sand, just walk on it and go into the water,’” says the 53-year-old teacher from Pennsville, N.J. “Now, I would definitely think twice before letting them play in the sand.”

For the new study, researchers interviewed more than 27,000 people who visited seven beaches around the country between 2003 and 2007.

People who took part in the study were asked about their contact and their children’s contact with sand on the day they visited the beach and then, 10 to 12 days later, they were phoned up and asked about any health symptoms that had developed in family members since the visit.

A total of 307, or 6 percent, of the kids developed diarrhea. All of the kids got better on their own and none ended up in a doctor’s office, Heaney says. But even relatively mild cases of diarrhea can spoil the fun for a kid and put a damper on the family's vacation.

The beaches included in the study were all within seven miles of a sewage treatment plant. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that beaches far from such plants are safe, says the study’s lead author Chris Heaney, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study was conducted in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Other studies that have examined the bacteria content of sand at a variety of beaches that were nowhere near a treatment plant have found high levels of E. coli and Enterococcus bacteria in the top 8 inches.