Puddles and ponds may look fun but its what's growing in - and lurking beneath the surface of - standing water that's causing concern for health officials and parents.
Before you or your kids go singing in the rain, or swimming in a watering hole, consider this: What else is lurking in those waters?
Doctor Lawrence Lyford with United Regional said, "Stagnant water is a nice place, its nice and warm so families like to put their pontoon boats out there and dive in to it. Its very dangerous."
From ponds to puddles, standing water can be a breeding ground for bacteria and disease.
Lyford said, "There is a condition in water that has been stagnant, diving into it there is an amoeba that lives in the water that can penetrate the brain and it is almost always fatal meningitis."
Other, more tangible hazards can also lay beneath the murky surface of standing water. "Kids are not afraid of that and they often step on glass, tin cans, rocks. It isn't necessarily the infection its what it drags into it that's the problem, getting the wound clean and without foreign bodies, whether it be sand, a piece of the glass or something."
Leman Weber said things for his 11 grandchildren have changed since he was young. "I wouldn't let them nowadays because there's just too much pollution and runoff from cars or whatever. We got acid rain now, kills our trees. When I was a child it was different you know we lived in the country and my mother let me play in the rain and I went in the mud puddles.'
Tuesday, May 21 2013 3:27 PM EDT2013-05-21 19:27:28 GMT
The Wichita Falls Family Health Center will host a health fair on Saturday. The fair is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the MPEC Ray Clymer Exhibit Hall in Wichita Falls.
The Wichita Falls Family Health Center will host a health fair on Saturday. The fair is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the MPEC Ray Clymer Exhibit Hall in Wichita Falls.
