Isn't there a risk of picking up intestinal parasites, like hookworm or pin worm if you walk barefoot in the wrong place and even if you know where not to walk, there is still a risk, is there not?
No hookworms or any other parasites here and I've barefooted all over Micronesia and tropical Asia including Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for the past 12 years. I think that regular cleaning makes it a bit harder for them to get started. Just stay away from farms and open sewers and you'll be fine...
I've been barefoot all over England for a good thirty years, including farmland and even floodwaters, and as far as i can tell i don't have any parasites. What are the symptoms? I eat a lot and don't seem to put any weight on, so...
Thanks seohsreven, i'm not showing any of the described symptoms, but they'll have another chance to get me this weekend when i go for a hike around a very soggy nature reserve near the Humber bridge. I'm actually more worried about a newly arrived pest, the "oak processionary moth caterpillar" which sheds poisonous hairs all over the place, causing nasty skin rashes. It probably won't affect my feet, but the rest of me is another matter!
There's a risk I wasn't aware of! Although, I've been going barefoot on and off for the last six years or so and apparently haven't encountered that yet.
This pest is new to England. It is endemic in southern Europe, where it is kept under control by natural predation. It is thought to have come into the country on imported trees, and it forgot to bring its predators with it! There was a nasty infestation on the spurn point nature reserve, untill the recent heavy rains took care of them, and some have appeared in Kew gardens, which the staff fixed with hairspray (to stick the hairs) and a blowtorch to incinerate them.
Most worms, including the pinworm, are spread by ingestion only. So unless you lick your feet or put them up on the dinner table, the risk is absolutely none. Hookworm can enter through the skin, but it hasn't been a problem in the South since modern plumbing has replaced the outhouses, and never was a problem in cooler climates -it needs a quite specific kind of climate to survive. There's a good archived post about hookworm here: http://www.barefooters.org/best-of/hookworm-ran.txt In third-world countries there is another parasite that enters through the skin, Schistosomiasis, which is a tropical disease only, caught by swimming or wading in infected water in developing countries. However these enter mainly in the thinner skin on legs and -if you've been swimming instead of just wading- elsewhere on the body. It lives in the water, not on the land, and as such it's not specifically a barefooters problem. Various kinds of tiny fleas and mites can be a problem in some areas, especially the tropical chigoe flea; it can jump only 20 cm and bites peoples bare and sandaled feet mostly, closed shoes do seem to be of help against those. But many other pests common in North America & Europe, in particular the US 'chigger' and any ticks, infest vegetation so again they don't enter through the foot in particular, and also they like to hide *under* clothing so unless you are sure to keep yourself *fully* covered -not always feasible if temperatures are high, or comfortable- a barefooter may be actually be better off.
