Soap on the Mississippi

[Steve.Lynette]

Here's a real "newbie" question: Do we need to use special hand soap and shampoo when we are on the river?

 

[tmhudson2]

From Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi:

"The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to three- quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water - what you wanted to do was to keep it stirred up - and when the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his stomach if he wanted to. He says:

'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow worth shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil any.'

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of the way across."

and

"It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing."

But then they didn't have Dawn and Prell back in the nineteenth century.

 

[mwph]

tm.......Great post! Thanks.

As to the original question, I for one have never heard of any such thing.

 

[Steve.Lynette]

Ummm. Is that a "yes"?

(Thanks for the Mark Twain excerpt. I do love his work

 

[Steve.Lynette]

tm.......Great post! Thanks.

As to the original question, I for one have never heard of any such thing.

I ask because you are required to use bio-degradable soaps if you bath in some of the Northern Lakes.

 

[Stray Cat]

Do we need to use special hand soap and shampoo when we are on the river?

We use our stuff from home. The only thing that I use that is biodegradable, is my Brite Wash boat soap...and then that is just because that it is....

 

[tmhudson2]

Don't know of any rules that would necessitate biodegradable soaps on the Big Muddy as a whole. That said, the 'dead zone' at the river's mouth seems to be getting bigger, and the alleged culprit is the high level of phosphates in the river, primarily from agricultural runoff. So using biodegradables can't hurt. There may be local ordinances on some parts of the upper Mississippi that I'm not aware of....

 

[Steve.Lynette]

Thanks!
We'll be gentle with Big Muddy.

 

[270SLX]

I boat in pool 14 and have never seen anything posted. Nothing on the Iowa DNR site has ever popped out at me about it. Are special biodegradable boaters soaps any more bidegradable than every day soaps and shampoos? I'm ignorant on that subject. If they are, I'll switch.

 

[tmhudson2]

Look for low phosphate stuff; phosphate is supposed to give clothes their extra whiteness and dishes their extra sparkle, but they aren't necessary to get stuff clean. I have read that Washington state has banned laundry and dishwashing detergents with phosphates, and that there's a minor rebellion going, with banned products being smuggled in from Oregon and Idaho.

As for bar soap and shampoo, I don't know that phosphates are a problem there; some people object to shampoo with sulphates, but I don't know that sulphates cause a water quality issue.

 

[tmhudson2]

One alternative to soap, at least for washing your hands, is to use baby wipes. You may be adding to landfill volume, but you keep chemicals out of the water. Note: this solution courtesy of my admiral!

 

[douglee25]

I use Dial soap because it contains Triclosan which kills bacteria.

Doug