Toxic Stew

I know that I've mentioned that there are two types of water piped into the Aramco houses: sweet water and raw water. Raw water is more or less directly from water wells. It is clear in color but sometimes smells a bit musty and is very salty. It can be drunk but I wouldn't recommend it. Sweet water has been desalinated and filtered and tastes okay.

In all Aramco houses, there is one sweet water tap in the kitchen (that's the swan neck faucet in the photo). All other faucets, the dish washer, the clothes washer, and the shower are connected to the raw water lines.


It costs money to make the sweet water and Aramco monitors the pressures of the lines carefully. It is a termination offense to tap into your sweet water line.

So we wash our clothes and bathe in salt water. I'll tell you, even the smallest cuts sting like crazy when that salt water hits them in the shower. My hair never feels clean.

I think I've also mentioned that soap and shampoo don't work very well in the raw water. I recently discovered that this problem goes quite a bit further than just a failure to lather.

A couple of weeks ago I opened up a new bar of Kiss My Face olive oil soap that I had brought back with me in February. I've used the soap before and like it.

Within two days I was covered in itchy, red pustules. They were particularly bad on my chest, back, neck, and ears. I could barely stand to put my head on the pillow at night. The soap had reacted with the raw water to produce some sort of toxic stew that burned my skin!

I tossed the soap. The pustules went away on their own in about a week. Hydrocortisone did nothing. I did get some calamine lotion at a pharmacy but it was a bit messy and I could only use it at night. Still, it helped a little although it was really time that solved the problem.