Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa water, Sanitation Mar- Apr 2015 Vol.10 No.2 | Page 38

Roundup

The Okavango Delta 1000th World Heritage site

chlorine and ultraviolet light before it reaches customers,”
CNN reported.

The Okavango
Delta in northwestern Botswana
was crowned
as the 1000th
World Heritage
site. A vast fanshaped plain, its
extraordinary
annual flood
occurring in the dry season supports one of the greatest
concentrations of wildlife in Africa, including threatened
large mammals such as the Cheetah, the White and Black
Rhinoceros and the Lion. It also provides livelihoods for
thousands of people living in and around the delta, many
of whom have conserved the area for generations.

How was the employee caught?

San Francisco Water Planner Suspended For Urinating
In Reservoir

Energy drinks raise resting blood pressure, with effect
most dramatic in those not used to caffeine

By Sara Jerome

Healthy young adults who don’t
consume caffeine regularly
experienced greater rise in resting
blood pressure after consumption of
a commercially available energy drink
-- compared to a placebo drink -- thus
raising the concern that energy drinks
may increase the risk of cardiac events,
Mayo Clinic researchers found.

Image credit: “Golden Gate,” evoo73 © 2011, used
under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Reservoirs and
urinals are not the
same thing. Though
seemingly obvious,
this point seems to
have eluded a midlevel San Francisco
water manager this
year.

“San Francisco
Public Utilities
Commission
spokesman Tyrone Jue said in February that the agency
confirmed anonymous complaints that maintenance
planner Martin Sanchez had urinated in the 674-milliongallon reservoir in the Sierra Nevada foothills early last
month,” the Associated Press reported.
Public health was not placed in danger, the report
said, noting that the reservoir had been drained for
maintenance.
“There is no public health risk to be concerned about
because the reservoir was not in use and the fact (is)
any water would have been treated anyway,” Jue said, per
CNN. “Still, his actions are completely unacceptable.”
San Francisco depends heavily on reservoir water.
“The Priest Reservoir is a 674 million-gallon basin, located
about 150 miles east of San Francisco, that provides water
for 2.6 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area. The
water in the reservoir is untreated and disinfected with
38

Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • March - April 2015

“An anonymous complaint to higher-ups [alleged] that a
number of employees had seen Sanchez urinate ‘several
times’ in the reservoir — including the day they learned
he had passed an interview for a management promotion
and that they would soon be reporting to him,” the San
Francisco Chronicle reported.
San Francisco is not alone in facing this issue.
“Last April, Portland, Oregon, [dumped] 38 million
gallons of water from a reservoir after a teen urinated in it.
A security camera captured the 19-year-old, with the help
of two friends, climbing a fence surrounding the reservoir
and, ahem, taking care of business,” CNN reported.
This exermpt has been reprinted with permission.

Source: Water Online

Results of the study will be presented
March 14 at the American College of Cardiology’s 64th
Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.
In this study, researchers alternately gave a can of a
commercially available energy drink or a placebo drink
to 25 healthy young adults, age 19 to 40, and assessed
changes in heart rate and blood pressure. Blood pressure
and heart rate were recorded before and 30 minutes after
energy drink/placebo drink consumption, and were also
compared between caffeine-naïve participants (those
consuming less than 160 mg of caffeine per day, the
amount frequently found in a cup of coffee) and regular
caffeine users (those consuming more than 160 mg of
caffeine per day).
Participants experienced a marked rise in blood pressure
after consuming the energy drink as compared to the
placebo. The effect was most dramatic in people who
did not typically consume much caffeine, researchers
found. Overall, the blood pressure increase was more
than doubled in caffeine naïve adults after consuming the
energy drink vs. placebo, they found.
Source: Mayo Clinic