Alaska<\/a> glacier, dipped an empty water bottle into a blue, pristine pool of water and drank it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nVideo of the rapper-turned-actor tasting the glacial water and proclaiming: \u201cOh my God!\u201d got millions of views on TikTok and Instagram. Some viewers expressed concern that he was endangering his life by drinking the untreated water, warning it might be contaminated with the parasite giardia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But an expert on glaciers from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks said the online brouhaha \u201cwas ludicrous\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe\u2019s totally fine,\u201d glaciologist Martin Truffer said Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sort of understandable that somebody would be concerned about just drinking untreated water, but if you drink water from a melt stream on a glacier, that\u2019s about the cleanest water you\u2019ll ever get.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ludacris donned ice cleats to knock off a bucket list item and walk Knik Glacier, about 40 miles (64km) north of Anchorage, while he was in the country\u2019s largest state to perform on Friday at the Alaska state fair. He was clearly pleased by the taste of the glacial water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m a water snob,\u201d he said in a later video before a concert Tuesday in Minneapolis. \u201cIt was the best-tasting water I\u2019ve ever had in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Symptoms of giardiasis, the illness caused by giardia, include diarrhea, stomach cramps and dehydration. It can spread from one person to another or through contaminated water, food, surfaces or objects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests people avoid swallowing water while swimming and boiling or filtering water from lakes, springs or rivers before drinking it to prevent getting sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Alaska department of environmental conservation does not recommend drinking untreated surface water, spokesperson Kelly Rawalt said in an email. It also has produced a flyer with safe drinking practices for outdoor enthusiasts, including adding chlorine or iodine to quart-size water containers and letting them sit an hour before drinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truffer, who acknowledged he knew of Ludacris only because his neighbor in Fairbanks named his cat after the rapper, said it\u2019s not always safe to drink water from a stream in the wild. But he said the water Ludacris drank hadn\u2019t had any exposure to biological activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just really no concern on these glacial streams about safety,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done this many, many times myself without ever having any issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alaska is home to about 100,000 glaciers, with the icy masses covering about 28,800 sq miles (74,590 sq km), or 3% of the state. According to the Alaska department of natural resources, that\u2019s 128 times the area covered by glaciers in the other 49 states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For some visitors to Alaska, seeing a glacier is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But the climate crisis is taking its toll, and the melting of Juneau\u2019s icefield is accelerating, according to a study that came out last month. The snow-covered area is now shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Glaciologist says \u2018he\u2019s totally fine\u2019 after video of rapper tasting water goes viral and viewers warn of contamination Chris \u201cLudacris\u201d Bridges sparked concern from some social media followers when he knelt on an Alaska glacier, dipped an empty water bottle into a blue, pristine pool of water and drank it. Video of the rapper-turned-actor tasting the glacial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[2146,30261,30260],"class_list":["post-31515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","tag-alaska","tag-glacial-water","tag-ludacris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31517,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31515\/revisions\/31517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}