A Batty Story from the PoolDoc

[PoolDoc]

Some of you may know that I still do some local service work for larger commercial pools. Today, my older son and I were delivering some equipment, and doing a bit of cleaning in prep for a drain, pressure wash, and refill on a 200,000 gallon pool.

He was in the pool (1' deep in the shallow end) with a Leafeater, when he found a dead bat in the water. This can happen, when birds or bats or bugs, fly toward reflected lights in the water. Initially, he thought nothing of it, and neither did I.

But, then it dawned on me that a dead bat in pool might be there because it had rabies. So, I asked. Sure enough, he had an open cut on his foot, acquired while rock hopping in a mountain stream this past Saturday. That's not good.

So, I considered the sanitizer situation. No joy -- the pool had polyquat in it, but that's not an viricide, and the rabies pathogen is a virus. There'd been chlorine in the pool a week before, but with no stabilizer, there was no chlorine left. So, no effective anti-viral agent was in the water.

Darn!

On the one hand, I figured the risk of his being infected was really low, but on the other hand, rabies is fatal something like 99.9999% of the time. Or more.

Not good.

No need to panic though. The vaccines are effective almost up to the time when the infection is symptomatic, and the incubation period is usually 3 weeks or more. But, there was reason to investigate further.

So, I called Poison Control. The lady I spoke to listened carefully, and then delivered a big "Hmm-mh", and put me on hold while she asked. After being gone long enough for me to start worrying, she reported back that the risk was exceeding low to non-existant. One of the specialist physicians on call told her that the virus would have been not only highly dilute, but is inactivated by both sunlight and water. Since the pool was wet, and in the sun, the risk was of rabies was much lower than the risk from the vaccine, which is small.

Ok.

So he's OK. We think.

We'll let you know if he comes down with rabies. (Just kidding. Sorta. )

Meanwhile, the recommendations I've made in the past are still good:

• Avoid touching dead animals with your hands; wash carefully with soap and water if you do.
• Remove the body from your pool, and dispose of it safely.
• Chlorinate to 5 ppm for 24 hours after, especially if it was a dead mammal. (Rat, bat, cat, rabbit, dog, skunk, possum, etc.)
• If you are using PHMB as a sanitizer, and can't add chlorine or any other effective viricide, you have my permisson to worry.

Ben
"PoolDoc"

[duraleigh]

Hi, Ben,

I would think poison control or the County Health Dept. would've tested the carcass for you....just to be completely positive.

[p.p.h.]

That is a batty story! Im %99.99999 sure Batman is gonna be ok.

[Watermom]

But - the real question is..... do you know how to read that decimal!

[tphaggerty]

My sister in law had a fox jump her, she managed to grab it by the neck before it bit her and had her husband killed it. She had scratches and such. Even then, the county health department REFUSED to test the animal for rabies, the hospital did it! (It was too expensive to have it tested according to the county). She did the whole rabies shot thing, apparently it wasn't as bad as people say it is.

Not a pool story, but don't count on the county health department to make the right call!

[MaryLee]

Wow..I'm glad your son is going to be O.K.

Thanks for the info on removing dead stuff from the pool. I get mice and chipmunks all the time and I'm always uneasy swimming for a few days after.