Others are afflicted by various gastrointestinal illnesses.
Dirty drinking water and bad sanitation cause gastrointestinal illnesses which prevent the body from absorbing nutrients.
Swimming in the water at the wrong time, he added, increases the risk of gastrointestinal illnesses, commonly known as swimmer's diarrhea, and skin rashes.
"We have seen a few people with the general respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses you'd expect in any population really.
Environmental scientists in California have calculated that sewage discharged near 28 Southern California beaches has contributed to up to 1.5 million excess gastrointestinal illnesses, costing as much as $51 million in health care.
Writing in The American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers said that the sand could also contain high levels of fecal bacteria, and that people who dig in it could develop gastrointestinal illnesses.
Scientific research, meanwhile, has delivered a string of ever-horrifying statistics to encourage our antibacterial urges, such as the fact that the spread of diarrhoea and gastrointestinal illnesses can be almost halved by practising effective hand hygiene.
In the same year as Milwaukee's water disaster, excessive turbidity in Philadelphia's municipal water led to scores of emergency room visits and hospitalizations, mainly of children and the elderly, who developed gastrointestinal illnesses after drinking turbid tap water.
Though often associated with cruise ships because it thrives in close quarters and because cruise lines are required by law to report all gastrointestinal illnesses onboard, the risk of contracting norovirus is hardly confined to ships.
Last year, there were 14 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses on 10 ships, affecting hundreds of passengers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Almost three-quarters of the children had one or more chronic health conditions, including asthma, immunosuppression or neurological, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal illnesses.
