Don't Be Rash: Mud Wrestling Irritates Students

Sometimes ingenuity just doesn't pay. Sometimes it can be the pits. Like when you try to have a mud-wrestling party with a minimum of hassle.

Twenty-eight University of Washington students learned that recently when they bought bags of topsoil at a home-and-garden store, mixed it with water and commenced their mud-wrestling session.

Sure beat digging and hauling mud, they figured. How efficient, they thought proudly.

The problem: Sixteen of them came down with a world-class skin rash, apparently the result of bacteria common in topsoil.

All had scores of blister-like sores over their arms and legs. (Yes, the rest of their bodies were protected by clothing.) And one woman developed a fever, headache and chills stemming from her mud-induced skin condition.

Five of 15 male wrestlers and 11 of 13 females were mud-afflicted.

Time in the ring seemed to be the deciding factor: Only two-thirds of those who wrestled for five minutes or less got the rash; all those with six minutes or more got it.

Medical literature says that doesn't happen with therapeutic mud baths, famous in some European and United States resorts. Nor has the Seattle-King County Health Department heard of the problem from any "exotic dancers" - some of whom apparently mud wrestle on stage.

Tiny splinters in the bagged topsoil seemed to be part of the problem.

"Splinters from bark in the soil aided in injecting bacteria under the skin," said Dr. Jeff Altman, a clinic director at Hall Health Center, the UW student health clinic. The physician pulled splinters out of most of the students.

The wrestling caper-turned-sour was reported in the current edition of "Epi-Log," the Health Department's mostly serious monthly newsletter, edited until recently by epidemiologist Jim Hogan.

Altman, in an interview, wouldn't tell who sponsored the mud wrestling or where it was held because of doctor-patient confidentiality. He would say only that it was a "living group, a residential group" - presumably from a dormitory.

As far as student pranks go, the youths could have done a lot worse, Altman said.

He recalled one group two years ago that required new members, as part of their initiations, to scream at the top of their lungs for as long as they could. Several ruptured tiny air sacs in their lungs and required hospital treatment.

As for the mud wrestlers, Altman said, "What right-thinking person could have predicted a problem with the soil? It had no damaging properties as far as they knew. And there were no cautions on the packages . . . and I don't think there should be."