 But there have been significant changes in the last year, and when I want to start out on some of those changes, and the first one I want to tell you about is, yes, I am now a floater. And I have been floating more times this year than I've been in pools and spas combined. And I've told some of you that very first float was so dramatic when I got out and walked out to the parking lot and sat in the car, I had to stop and think about whether or not I was in the moment enough to drive a motor vehicle on a highway. And before I got on the interstate, I hit quick trip and got a Dr. Pepper with extra sugar just to make sure that I could stay within the marker. And I can't even make up lies that good. That was my experience. One float, I'm in. Sorry, you can't get rid of me now. But I'm going to do like I did last year. I'm going to start out and I'm going to do some things that I've never done before. And I'm going to do some things that I always do. One thing that I've never done before is recycle five or six slides and the first few slides are going to be recycled from last year because not at all you saw some of those last year. And it's fundamental concepts that we need to understand about disinfection and sanitization to keep our customers safe, our staff safe and the Department of Health out of our businesses. But I am not wearing a black shirt this year. What we want, customers, our friends, our international relations, do not be fooled. The pants are still black. The doom and gloom of running your business into the ground and exposing you to legal peril that you cannot imagine is there if you are not paying attention to what I am going to talk about for the next 30 minutes. Okay. And I will continue to make the most ridiculous comparisons you have ever heard. And continuing with the 20-year tradition, there will be the word feces. Okay. If you're a germaphobe, please look around and hit the exit and get the hell out now because here we go, boys and girls. This is Dan and Yoga. It has been sitting in my hotel room for 18 hours, unrefrigerated. And it tastes better now than it did 18 hours ago because the fermentation process has continued. And now there is between 100 million and 100 billion bacteria in there. And these bacteria make vitamin Bs that we cannot synthesize. And we need to seed our gut population periodically. And if you've ever been on oral antibiotics, you know why you need to reseed your gut with things like this. But warning, it gets deeper than that. This is a smoked, fermented sausage. And it contains a bacteria known as pediacoccus, which is essential for our gut health. Vegans, slim gyms, our health food. I thought the sound effect there was accidental, but damn it was appropriate. All right. It's not the bacteria, the viruses, everything that we need to worry about. It is not the human physiology. It is not the behavior. It is the interaction of all of those with the environment. And it is that small little spot where everything comes together. And that is what we come together to talk about in that float tank. And the only thing we can control from a microbial viewpoint is the environment. And that is called a sanitation and disinfection management program. And that is your number one responsibility. Profit is weighed out on the list. A dead and dying customer is not a returning customer. There are different kinds of bacteria. Health department knows this. You don't need to know this, but you need to know there. You can talk about every imaginable way to get bacteria and viruses and fungi and everything else and parasites into your body, but there's just three basic ways. You're going to inhale it. You're going to swallow it, or you're going to do something really crazy, like you're going to get in water, and you're going to let it touch your skin. And we know each one of these pathways, what germs there are, how they get in, and what the infective doses are. And that is a key to understanding the disinfection process. Fifty years from now, if I am known for one thing, this is the slide. This is the most comprehensive understanding of the interaction between humans and the microbial world in an aquatic environment that is there. Most health departments do not know this. Others that have travel budgets or have read vigorously know it. If you were in a small area that has an underfunded health department, you are fighting this. Okay, risk management. Hazard is something you don't want. Exposure. If it is there, are you exposed to it? Doce response. Big technical words. We cannot control. Do you test your customers? Are you susceptible to Pseudomonas? Do you run a little swab in their mouth and say, oh, you can't get in my tank? No. Do you control exposure? No, they're in the water, they're wet. You control the hazard with your disinfection and sanitization program. That is your number one job. All right, Canadians, I warned you. Do the experiment in the summer. I have an assignment for everybody in this room. Next Saturday, except the Canadians, because it's not summer up there, go out and buy two pounds of fish. Use your car, not your significant other's car. Have it nice little wrapped and everything, and I want you to get home, and I want you to lay it on the passenger seat of the car, and I want you to roll the windows up. And this is Saturday morning, and you do not get in that car until Monday. And I want you to get in that car and smell that fish. You can't keep fish in your car for two days. George Washington made a fortune shipping fish from Alexandria, Virginia to London on wooden sailing ships before refrigeration. Salt. And understanding how that man made a fortune from the British before leading a revolution against them is the fundamental understanding of a key aspect of your disinfection program. Water activity. Very complicated process. No, it's not. You don't have enough water. You don't live. NASA is spending billions of dollars to find water on Mars. Why? No water, no life. Salt. Now, we got an update on water activity this year, Ashcon driving down the road, sees something out there, oh, takes a sample in and measures the available water in float solution. We, I took a wild guess last year, well, I was wrong. Sue me. Okay, now we got a better number. Those organisms above water activity can't grow. Those below can. Are the numbers absolute? Is life absolute? These are approximations. What's it mean? It means that key bacteria that the health department is concerned about, like Legionella, can't grow. And if your salt level is appropriate, Pseudomonas can't grow. And that's part of your water management program is to keep the salt level up. But Staphylococcus. Yeah, it's going to survive a long period of time because I normally grow it in seven and a half percent sodium chloride and that's a damn salty solution. It doesn't mind it at all. It's not a pathogen in water. Your health department doesn't know that, so they'll scare the hell out of you. But it's not a pathogen. You can find it. Aspergillus, a little black bungee that grows in your showers and around the grout lines and that little black ring around the door to your tank, it's salt tolerant. And knowing that it is salt tolerant and knowing what the water activity is explains the musty smells in our float tanks. It's coming from bungee. And you can get human pathogens like Candida, but they're not transmitted in water. They're transmitted on surfaces out there in your public areas, which you are supposed to be disinfecting. All right, a couple of us consistently took the talks on the road this year. Somebody showed up three minutes to the end in a certain talk in Charleston. And with an excuse, I couldn't get there because there was a hurricane, Graham. Next time, why don't you just say, my dog ate the plane ticket. It'd be a little bit more believable just because it's a cat for hurricane, Graham. Can't you come up with a better excuse than that? But we took the talk out on the road. World Aquatic Health Conference, North Texas Environmental Association, Ohio Environmental Health Association, and we talked about the risk assessment. And you know what they thought? They bought in instantly. The health officials that have seen the risk assessments that we put together are with us. We still need to reach a few more people, but we have made huge progress this year. And I emailed the talk to Katie Moore down in Texas and on the phone, and no good deed goes unpunished, and she recruited me to be on the NSF-50 task force. Okay, it's slow. It's coming. It is the light in the tunnel. It will come through. All right, I can see most of you out here, but I'm going to ask a question before I flip on to the next slide. Has anybody in here ever had difficulty getting the Department of Health to understand that you are dedicated and serious about public health? Not about floating, but about public health. Have you ever had the problem? Let's get some hands in the air. If you have had problems, there's a few hands out there. Let me with two slides illustrate what the problem really is. It's about mindset. What is this object? Go ahead and somebody yell and answer out. You know you're already wrong because I've got a trick question to it. Somebody yell and answer out. An elephant. Of course you think it's an elephant, but the health department sees something else. Let's look at what they see. Oh, they see a dry patchy thing up there with a little bit of dust with some really bristly hair if you ever ran your hand on the face of an elephant. And look inside that ear-like object on whatever this thing really is. Temperature change, moisture change, wax level. Look in the mouth, water, plant, juices, sugars, fermentation processes, plaque. Look at the trunk. Don't look too close because you don't know where that trunk has been. Look in the stomach, pH of one, two. Look in the small intestine, different flora. Look in the large intestine. Look at the green squishy stuff between the toes. By the way, this object was at the back end of the herd. You know what it's been stepping in. So what is this object if it is not an elephant? You're really, really close. This is a myth, then. Has anybody ever heard of the word myth, then before? Why haven't you heard of it? Because I made it up about two weeks ago because the slide really works good. A myth, then, is a mobile incubator for various ecological niches. You see the elephant. The health department sees a myth, then. How does that apply to us? Well, oh, what's this? Is your float center built on wheels? It's not a myth, then, but I'm going to give you 83 percent because you got five out of the six letters, right? And because you were brave enough, I'm going to give you 100 bonus points. The rest of you get nothing. Let's look closely at it. The ceiling, moisture, little salt. Look at the walls, more salt, less moisture. Look at the float solution, less moisture, more salt. Look at the little black ring around the door. Oh, oh, we just found out, Sprigillas. Look at the walls, the ceiling. And don't swab the floors because you don't want to know there. For God, whatever you do, don't look at the drain. This is a sift, then. Five out of the six letters, you got credit. It's a stationary incubator for various ecological niches. And your health department knows it. This is the way they think. And your sanitation needs to address, OK, that's where we are. That's our mindset. How do we go there? We need to make the understanding micro pertinent to our daily lives and our operations. So let's do it with three concepts. Concept number one, an unopened keg of beer does not contain pathogens. Concept number two, one of the most hazardous environments you could possibly expose yourself is a poorly maintained spa or a hot tub. Concept number three, a well run float tank is more like a keg of beer than it is a spa or a hot tub. Hey, flux, you've got 24 hours to come up with a more ridiculous comparison than that. Let's look at beer. This is a process of manufacturing beer. You harvest the grain, you take it in, you clean it, you remove the grasshopper parts, you clean it, you remove a few grasshopper parts, you remove a few grasshopper parts. I've got stories about grasshopper parts. Tonight I'll share them. You mash it, you malt it, you boil it, you add hops, pay attention, this comes back. You cool it, you pitch it with yeast, you ferment it, you filter it, and then you put it in a keg. What do you really have? What you have is a process where you have boiled the water, kind of adding like chlorine to the tap water. Step one, you've got alcohol in there, which is a antimicrobial agent. It's not perfect at the concentrations in beer, but it's reasonable, kind of like salt. You've got hops in there. Let's talk about hops. Let's talk about India Pale Ale. When the British owned that little place called India and they wanted to drink beer in India, they had to ship beer by wooden sailing ships from England around Africa to India. And they added a whole bunch of preservatives, and they made a beer called India Pale Ale that had a hell of a lot of hops in it. Jake Marty, are you on a wooden sailing ship between England and India? There are other beers you could drink, Jake, but what's in the beer? There are yeast. I can get yeast out of any keg beer you've ever seen in your life. Filtration is not a hundred percent process. There are a bacteria called aceto-bacteria that makes the beer and the spoiled and the unrefrigerated lines over the weekend turn to vinegar. There are other bacteria in there, and they are very low levels. And if you leave that keg unrefrigerated when you're in grad school and had a party, you know that beer won't taste very good after two days. It's like float solution. There are microbes, and they are at low level. But there's one thing we do need to talk about. They clean that keg and sanitize it before they put the fresh beer in it. So if somebody dropped a brown trout over a baby roof or had the Hershey squirts in your float tank, maybe you should clean it before you put the next lot of water in it. Okay, before I click this one, if there's any float tank manufacturers, I would like you to cover your ears and put your head between your knees because for the next 30 seconds, I'm going to insult you for just a little bit, but it'll be fine. You'll live, maybe. When the health department sees one of these and you walk in with a float tank, what they see in a float tank is the same plumbing, the same physical concept of design as a portable spa. And you are held against the standards for running a spa. You are looking at the elephant. They are looking at the myth then. How do you run a spa? Well, you know, there's a lot of ways you can run a spa. You got bacteria coming in. You got warm water, ooh, kind of in the range where we are. PH, the filter, high concentrations of working higher in a spa than in a float tank. But you've got organics. And what do you need for microbial growth? Organics. Testing is easy. And ozone's there. Starts to have a little comparison. And how do you run it? You disinfect it with chlorine. And you test it frequently. And you filter it. And you run turnovers. And there are signage requirement. But you don't have to have a shepherd's hook or a life ring in a spa. But when you're applying for that first float tank, that's a variation you have to see. Because sometimes they think you're a swimming pool instead of a float tank. Yes, I've been through the argument. OK, so what's the problem with the spa? The disinfectant level can be depleted so rapidly. If you've ever been in a sales meeting and been down to the pool at 1 o'clock in the morning, and the sales guy, and there's 13 of them, with one leg in the pool, and they're spilling various alcoholic beverages in there, there's no damn chlorine in that spa. And those microbes that have come in on their feet in the fill water start to grow. And they establish a biofilm. And some of it's Pseudomonas and some of it's Legionella. And it's in there. And then somebody forgets to do one thing. They test the water, 48 hours, 72 hours, three months. The biofilm's there. It could be a year later. Somebody forgets one. And they get in there. And between 24 and 24 hours and 11 days, they've got a Pseudomonas rash. Most of the time it's not bad. 5% of the time is antibiotics required. Can be a very serious infection. And if you happen to be over the age of 50 and you get Legionnaires disease, you have up to a 40% fatality rate. And the health department is comparing you to a spa. If you are keeping good records, you are distinguishing yourself from those facilities that have problems like this. Are you keeping adequate records that are impressive to the health department? Not to your staff, but to you. Are they overblown for what probably the health threat is? If your records aren't good, you're going to be compared to one of these. What's the other flow tanks? All right, that's what you're compared to. It's the same kind of idea. And you walk in with this really crazy idea. I want to run this thing that's got warm water and organic load in there, and I don't want to use chlorine. What's the first word out of their mouth? No, that's what we're facing. Are you starting to see the myth then? All right, let's do the very first thing. The easiest thing costs a little bit of money, but let's do something a little different. Let's not be a hot tub. Let's put on their best available technology. I don't sell equipment. I'm telling you, in my professional opinion, what is the best available technology? That best available technology is a bag or a sock filter with a one micron pore size. What does it do for you immediately? Can you filter out bacteria with it? No, most of them can't grow anyway. Not an issue. Can it filter out aspergillus? Yes, the health department doesn't remember that slide that I showed you earlier. They're still thinking cryptosporidium and Giardia, which is not a problem in spas, but they're controlling you against that. Will it reduce the threat of cryptos and Giardia, which is a major concern of health departments? Yes, by itself. Can you filter out viruses, which are really small with a one micron bag filter? No, I got a typo on the slide and I didn't spot it until two nights ago and I was not about to make a change on it because not everybody's perfect and that includes me. Ignore that bottom bullet point. What can we do? We can reduce the potential threat to such a level that pessimistic health departments buy into the thought in a 30 minute presentation. And then we can take that bag filter and we can stack other technology on top of it, like UV or ozone, and I have not yet said the word chlorine, have I? And now we have multiple layers of protection just like in the beer. Yes, just because I like beer, it is still a valid comparison. What about chlorine as a disinfectant in float tanks? Does it work? I don't have a clue. Nobody else does either. And I am one of the leading authorities in the world on control of recreational water illness and pools and spots and I can't tell you whether it works. Scared the hell out of you? No, I'm not worried about it anyway. Can you measure chlorine in your float? Well, I did an assignment about a year ago. I went on a business trip like I always do and I keep the technicians busy. And I said, take this sample that Graham sent me or maybe it was Ashconn. I can't tell him apart sometimes. Anyway, and I said, spike it with chlorine and take the test, and by the way, I happen to work for the world's largest chlorine producer for pools and spots, and everybody in my lab is a certified pool and spa operator and they test chlorine multiple times a day and then we have every toy you could imagine. And I said, use every toy you can get. Can you measure the free chlorine? And you know what they came back with? It ain't gonna work. And then we send a sample up to the National Sanitation Foundation at NSF and you know what their results came back? Horrible. Your results are inaccurate. No adequate analytical science in the world will accept your results. But if the health department tells you to do it, do it. How do you run it? Follow the health department. If they tell you to test, test. Is it gonna do you anything? No, but it's gonna keep them happy. If you're gonna test, test it like you have to do a commercial pool and spa three times a day, minimum, beginning of the day, middle of the day, end of the day. Write the record down, date, time, initials. Do it. When you test, document it. Never postate anything because that's fraud. How much chlorine should you use? Well, there is no federal standard for it. I can't tell you. Most health departments are gonna say one to four, maybe one to 10, follow their guidance. What about organic load? If you're using chlorine and it smells like chlorine, you have combined chlorine in there. I have no way to get rid of that combined chlorine. It is a very complicated process. Drain the tank, put fresh water in it. The best source is probably unscented, unthinkin', unthickened bleach. And some health departments will get very picky and they will tell you you have to use registered bleach. Now what is the bacteria? If you have bleach here that one of them has an EPA label on and one doesn't have an EPA label on, will they both kill bacteria? As long as you don't tell my boss I said this, yes. But the health department may tell you to buy the bleach that costs just a little bit more because it's got an EPA label on it. Expect a few questions. Routine operations, check the specific gravity that is the best way to ensure that you do not have Pseudomonas aeruginosa. And the health department is concerned about it. Given a choice, run higher, not lower. Check the chlorine. Use three turnovers minimum. And if somebody comes in and says, I only have five minutes, can I get in there before I get three turnovers? The answer is not no, it is hell no. Particularly if it is in your permit because you just violated your permit and they can pull your permit if they catch you doing that. And if you have a UV system in there, is it warmed up? Some bulbs have a warmup period. It won't kill until it's at operating temperature. And it has a lifetime. Do you have a logbook on your UV system? Usually they run about 3,000 hours, change that bulb out at about 2,800 hours and have it in a logbook because if you didn't document it, you didn't do it according to the health department. In case there is an issue, what happens if you get blood in the water? It's not a health threat, it's a cosmetic threat to whatever you gotta do. If you've got feces in the water, drain it, clean it, disinfect it, start from scratch and document it. The health department may have a form. Use their form. You're now talking to them. You're doing what they want you to do. Use their form. If not, there are forms available online we can get you set up. Keep your records for five years. Secondary and supplemental disinfection systems, UV, ozone, AOP systems. There are ones that have a little bit higher price tag and there are cheap ones. You get what you pay for. If you're buying that cheap one, you might as well save your money and go to dinner and spend it wisely. I'm helping a center open up just south of Atlanta and I ran into the health department and I said, I don't wanna use chlorine. I wanna use a one micron bag filter and a UV and a Dell AOP system and I think we're gonna get permission to run with microbiology in a certified lab and make that data available and publish it with the blessing of the Department of Health from Georgia, the state, not the country. All right, let's talk about one specific incident and you need to know this because it's gonna get around. There was an outbreak out in British Columbia. Tank had been out of service for at least two weeks. The software wasn't working. They put somebody in it. They got Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They had to go to the doctor. They had to get a lot of antibiotics. The health department got involved in it. They found high levels of Pseudomonas. We don't even know how high it maxed out on the test. They found chloro, coliforms. Another kind of bacteria. We'll explain that later over a beer. There was no chlorine, of course. They did not measure the magnesium sulfate. We don't know what the level was. The articles published it in form. I get a picture of the tank. I don't know the provenance of the picture. Your reaction said it all. All right, let's get some facts straight. Float solution is not sterile. It is not self-sanitizing. It is not. Hydrogen peroxide used at the concentrate is not a disinfectant. Trust me, I've done the microbiology in pools and spas. Cartridge filters will not remove a single germ of concern. Bag filters will remove the larger ones, but not the smaller ones. Even with chlorine, UV, ozone, and a one micron bag filter, there will still be a small number of germs. And if you got some anal retentive guy like me, I can find them. But they're gonna be at such a low level. I've gotta work at it. Your job is to make me work. We manage illness. We do not eliminate it. And I'm going to tell you right now, one of the worst things you could ever possibly do is go beer drinking with Ashconn 48 hours before your talk because he asked the question and it cost me four hours of sleep. Because I had to think up a way to answer his question, what is the maximum way we can eliminate illness in float tanks? And I came up with the answer. Ashconn, next Wednesday, I want you to call your general contractor and order 150 trucks of concrete. And I want you to fill every room in your facility from the floor to the ceiling and let it set up. And that will prevent every illness you could ever possibly imagine. And there's no other choice. Best available technology, best management practice, and business liability insurance. Okay, I'm running over, but you. All right, I ran across an article a few weeks ago. I'm sitting there on my phone, read this, and it's like, oh, this is good. 10 things that food health inspectors will never do. One of them, the phase, isn't it? Everybody have lunch? Fine, if you're not showing symptoms in seven days, the lunch was fine, you'll be okay. All right, but a question that I got asked is how safe is a well-managed float solution? Tough question. A well-managed float solution probably has lower health risks than the lemon you dropped in your glass of iced tea. And if you are putting lemon or limes in your beer, why don't you switch over to a beer that you don't have to change the flavor on? That's so gross anyway. All right, you're all gonna get an email, and so don't bother to write this down. A friend of mine, Dr. Laura Supus at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, is doing microbiology, and she's gonna have a survey about operational parameters, and she is going to help develop information. And so you're gonna get this link, answer it because we're in this together, we will all hang together, or we will hang separately. The light at the end of the tunnel is a train, and if you're standing in front of it, you will end up like a dead possum bloated in the sun with your a-leg sticking in the air. We must work together. And I don't know about you, but I could sure use a beer at this point.