In the wake of a widespread water outage in parts of Montgomery County, where millions of gallons of water leaked from a broken main under the Great Miami River overnight, Dayton Children’s Hospital is urging parents of young children to use health and safety precautions.
Thomas Krzmarzick is Dayton Children’s Division Chief of Emergency Medicine.
He says parents should follow county boil advisories because prevention is better than finding out you’ve ingested contaminated water.
“The biggest concern is that you're going to get some type of bacteria or germ that's mostly going to cause GI symptoms: belly pain, vomiting, diarrhea,” he says.
Krzmarzick says it better to be safe where the health of young children is concerned.
“For little babies, when you're making their bottles do you need to make sure that you sterilize the bottles and the rings and the nipples and their pacifiers very well by boiling water for a couple minutes to make your make your bottles or obviously pre-mixed formula you could use.”
Montgomery County public health officials note the typical standard for drinking, cooking or oral hygiene water is to bring it to a rolling boil for at least one minute and allow it to cool before using.
Water used for bathing does not need to be boiled, health officials say.
Children’s officials say they’re watching for illnesses related to the water leak. So far Montgomery County has not reported a spike in health problems related to the water outage.
Both Premier Health and Grandview Medical Center also reported no health problems as a result of the water issue. Both medical centers say they activated emergency measures and made bottled water available to patients and staff who needed it.
