Neoprene is designed to absorb water too! That is why wetsuits work. They capture and absorbe water into the layers of porous rubber and your body heat warms it up. They don't trap and hold it quite as well as a diaper does, but in terms of absorbing pee, there is very little difference in the two.
But before this gets any further off track or Charles calls in the xfiles team, let me just clarify one thing. I am not trying to argue to anybody for any reason that there is some huge and underappreciated risk from pee in wetsuits. I am also not trying to argue that anybody should be scared of peeing in their wetsuit or being around others who have peed in theirs. My only reason for entering an opinion on this thread was to counter the arguments of those stating that pee was entirely sterile and that it was irrational for an operator not to handle people's wetsuits. In doing so, I gave an opinion based on personal experience that pee is not always sterile and that it can be an agent of disease transmission. I didn't do that to say that I thought it was common, likely, or a big problem. It was just stated to counter the arguments that there was no possibility that it could be a problem. There are dozens of possible diseases and disease tranmission mechanisms that could result from handling wetsuits from people infected with various diseases...none of them are particularly likely, but none of them are necessarily impossible either (before anybody objects, think things like herpes, skin infections, etc. Again, not likely at all...but not impossible).
If you are a dive operator and believe the possibility is very small and want to expose your employees to that possibility for whatever wage you are willing to pay them, and they are willing to do it, then more power to you. You have every right to do it and your employees are adults who can make their own decisions. Likewise, I understand that there are operators who don't see the risk as small or impossible, and who just don't want to subject their employees to it for what they are paying them. I don't think those dive operators should be attacked, criticized, or belittled for making that choice either. If you want to pee in your wetsuit, that is your right. But it is extremely arrogant to think that you have the right to demand that somebody else wash it out for you after you do it so that you don't have to. They have the right to decide not to do that, and I think it is wrong to criticize them for it. That is all I really wanted to state by commenting.
---------- Post added September 20th, 2013 at 04:27 PM ----------
I probably shouldn't enter the fray but I feel like it may be time to interject a few medical facts. Staph bacteria, MRSA or otherwise, are not a common cause of UTI in the general population. I do not work with nursing home residents so can not speak to its frequency in this population but I doubt you will find many diving, in wetsuits or otherwise.
Staph, including MRSA, is a common cause of wound infections, cellulitis and abscesses. Could MRSA be transferred by a wetsuit? Unsurprisingly, I have no data on that. Certainly, an open, draining wound infection is contagious but would it survive the wetsuit environment, I have no idea. One would hope such an individual would not be diving. Could handling such a wetsuit give you a UTI? Absolutely not. (edit: Unless you are doing something very odd with it...)
I agree with you that not many nursing home patients do much diving. As I said above, I only brought up the MRSA in UTI possibility in order to point out that urine was not always sterile, not because I thought it was a likely exposure pathway. Just to inject some additional facts...I can't find the link now, but I saw a link to a study on MRSA survival in various types of pool water...chlorinated, salt water, non-chlorine disinfectant, etc. They found that within about an hour of the MRSA being put into the water, it was no longer active or infectious. I think I also read that something like 7% of folks may be carriers of MRSA who do not necessarily have outward symptoms or lesions. So while it is not implausible to think of people with MRSA going diving without knowing about it, even if they did release some pus, urine, blood, etc. into a wetsuit, it would only likely be infectious for an hour or less in salt water. So again, quite unlikely...but not impossible.
---------- Post added September 20th, 2013 at 04:33 PM ----------
50% of people admit they pee in their wetsuit, the other half lie about it.
It remains to be seen what percentage demand that somebody else clean it out for them for a few extra pesos a day.
