Unexpected Travel Dangers: Ways to Prevent Illness When Abroad

Traveling is an exciting new experience, and in all the excitement about seeing a new place and having a new experience, many people forget some of the less obvious dangers. These dangers can ruin your trip by causing illness.

Food

Food is a danger that travelers don't always consider, especially food served from street carts. Flies land on food, and their legs carry traces of anything they have recently landed on, which could include feces or rotting garbage, neither of which you want on your lunch order from a street vendor.

Flies are a hard situation to avoid, as you cannot avoid food altogether. The best you can do is glance around and make sure the place you are eating at doesn't have any bugs flying around and try to only eat at more reputable places, such as those from a guidebook.

The best thing to do, and the thing that is most effective, is to order foods that are thoroughly cooked and served steaming hot, as these conditions kill pathogens and germs, which will make it less likely you will eat contaminated foods.

Hygiene

This includes your own as well as food preparation workers.

Don't brush your teeth with tap water, as it may be contaminated or contain things that you don't have immunity to, but which locals do, and can make you sick.

Hand washing is a great way to help avoid pathogens or bacteria getting into your mouth.

When it comes to food preparation workers, this is also very important. While it's common practice, even the law in the United States that is not the case in all countries. While more and more places are adopting this practice, there are still places where it is not standard practice.

This is another situation that is difficult to address, so the best you can do is to see if the restaurant employees look clean, though that is far from definitive. Check the bathroom to see if it has soap. If there is no soap, it is unlikely the food preparation workers are using it to clean their hands. Again, try to choose restaurants that are reputable.

Produce

Fruits and vegetables are very healthy, but in areas of the world where the water isn't safe to drink, raw produce is also not safe to eat. Crops are often watered with unsafe and untreated water, and raw ingredients, such as the produce in a salad, is washed with untreated tap water. Salads are very unsafe, since they are a raw food that is washed with tap water, which can result in a lot of bacterial contamination.

Fruit that's peeled is the only produce that is safe to eat raw, as the bacteria will come off with the peel, leaving the edible fruit safe for consumption.

A safe precaution is to talk to your doctor about taking an antibiotic with you as a precautionary measure in case you accidentally ingest unwelcome bacteria or pathogens.