NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

The man who rescued a family from the water in Kai Iwi Lakes in Northland says he’s not a hero and he would do it for anyone.

Haruru man Aaron Stott was walking along the beach last month with his family when they saw two kids in the water, and something “didn’t look right”.

He watched as their mother ran into the water, screaming, and dropped under the surface.

Stott pulled the mother and child out of the water before hearing screaming and shouting from the shore.

“Someone said to me ‘no, there’s two more’,” he told RNZ.

Stott turned around but was unable see anyone else, so he dived down and found a father and child at the bottom of the lake.

“One boy was just sitting there and the father was trying to get back up, but it was like he was moving in slow motion,” he said.

“I managed to dive down and grab them and bring both of them back up.”

When he and others got the pair back to shore, the boy was blue, Stott said.

” got him up on the beach, and put him in the recovery position and whacked his back a bit, and he wasn’t really responding,” he said.

The child suddenly took a deep breath and started breathing again.

“Ten seconds either way, they wouldn’t have made it,” Stott said.

Stott said he was comfortable in the water and had spent his younger days surfing.

“It’s a bit hard when you’re trying to take two people out of the water,” he said.

Stott said after the rescue, he was thinking of all the things in his day that had led him to that moment.

“It was a pretty strange feeling really.”

He said he wasn’t worried for his own safety; he just had to get them out of the water.

“I just knew I had to get them up, I didn’t even think about it really.”

Police Senior Sergeant Dave Wilkinson described Stott as a hero, but that was not how he saw himself.

“I would do it for anyone, you know, I’d do it for anyone that was in trouble or anyone that needed help, I would help them,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a hero, I guess I just don’t want to see people suffering at the end of the day.”

He hoped his story would encourage others to be safe around water.

“If it stops anyone else going in the water, I’d be grateful,” Stott said.

Working as a chef, Stott said this evening, he was preparing dinner for the Prime Minister.

Water Safety NZ’s Gavin Walker said the rescue was incredible, but he wanted people to know how risky it can be.

“When you have a situation like this and your first instinct is to react, just take a few seconds to scan the situation,” he said.

“The safest way to help people is to try and do it from land or from something else like a boat.”

Walker suggests throwing a boogie board, throwing a rope or getting someone in a boat to help out in a situation like that.

“If you make the call that you have to go in, none of those options are there, make sure you have a quick look at the conditions to make sure that you’re not putting yourself into a situation that you might not be able to cope for,” he said.

“Super important if you’re going in the water, make sure you take some form of floatation with you, so that could be somebody’s chilly bin from nearby, a chilly bin lid, a ball, a boogie board, a life jacket. Actually having something with you that’ll help you float when you try and help this other person out can make the difference between life and death in these situations.”

Walker hoped those people getting out in the water over the long weekend would be mindful of the dangers.

“Tragically, we’ve seen 16 New Zealanders already lose their lives in the water since the start of the year, and this weekend looks like it’s going to be an amazing long weekend,” he said.

“So as Kiwis go out and make the most of their time in the water, make sure they’re thinking and acting safely so that everybody comes home after the long weekend.”

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Shredded muscles, chiselled jawlines, tanned and clear skin – idealised human bodies bombard people’s daily lives on billboards, televisions and phones.

Now, social media’s driving a boom in the use of untested and potentially harmful drugs that claim to help achieve these Hollywood good looks.

They’re types of synthetic peptides and people with no expertise or supervision are injecting them directly into their bodies.

Despite being unapproved by Medsafe, they can be bought online “for research purposes”.

It follows an expert warning the use of these drugs is dangerous and many are sold based on unproven claims.

Synthetic peptides can be found in some therapeutic drugs, some that might sound familiar are weight-loss drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic.

The drugs are designed to mimic naturally occurring peptides in the human body.

Some can be prescribed by a doctor to fight conditions such as type-two diabetes and sleep apnea. But there’s a growing online market for unregulated peptides that are being used as performance enhancing drugs.

*Bill, a 25-year-old Southland man, first discovered he could buy peptides about six months ago.

“I managed to source a local supplier in New Zealand; from there I managed to source a few different suppliers in China that actually have third part testing along with what you’re buying.

“I’m not going to say it’s 100 percent the safest way to do it, obviously it’s not a chemist.”

Bill said he used a mixture of anabolic steroids in combination with a specific peptide to try and make his muscles look more defined.

He acknowledged that taking unregulated substances came with risks.

“99 percent of peptides out there, you don’t actually know the full effects of what they do in humans, maybe animals if you’re lucky.”

Other peptides on the market claim to enhance melanin and collagen production.

Kai, a 23-year-old man from Auckland, said peptide use was openly talked about at his local gym.

“There’s a trend and everyone’s saying peptides are good for you, take this one for better muscle mass, take that one for better skin, take this one to burn fat.”

Advertising unapproved or prescription-only drugs… including on social media in New Zealand and Australia is illegal.

But Kai said his social media feeds were filled with influencers talking about using peptides.

“You look at one gym clip and then you get like five within the next 10 slides and then it just evolves from there, the more interactions you have.

“At the moment mine is just mostly influencers that are on substances.”

‘There are far too many risks’

Emeritus professor in sports medicine Dr David Gerrard from the University of Otago said using unapproved drugs was dangerous.

“Don’t go there, there are far too many risks without medical supervision and determining what your body is normally producing anyway.

“To supplement that with a synthetic form of the same chemical messenger carries a significant risk.”

“”They are dangerous.”

Dr Gerrard said many peptides talked about on social media didn’t mention the negative consequences.

“I think it’s been trivialised by the people who are in the process and in the marketplace for distributing these drugs and claiming that they will give you new vigour, better complexion and you’ll feel less stressed.

“I think there definitely needs to be a crackdown on the promotion through social media of these unqualified statements, that have come from people who [want] a financial and pecuniary gain from distributing these things.”

Dr Gerrard said athletes in the past have tried to use types of peptides to increase their red-blood cells, but the consequences were life threatening.

“The more red-blood cells you have, the sticker your blood becomes and these athletes, in an unsupervised way were using these drugs.

“They ended up having strokes and heart attacks and problems associated with circulation to brain and heart.”

Many peptides are also on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list, he said.

“They are tested for and they could mean that a young athlete could commit an anti-doping rule violation and lose their ability to compete in their sport. “

Gaps in drug checking

Casey Spearin from drug checking clinic Know Your Stuff said they were seeing an increasing amount of performance enhancing drugs, including peptides.

“We heard about these kinds of substances, maybe five, six times in the course of a year. Now we’re getting several inquiries into our inbox per week, asking ‘can you check peptides and where can I go to get these checked?”

But Know Your Stuff’s clinics don’t have the technology to be able to check these kinds of drugs. Spearin said if people buy drugs online, they couldn’t be sure of what’s actually in them.

“I’ve talked to people that are interested in importing and distributing these types of things and they are seeking ‘can I actually get testing on these; can I know that the product I’m offering is safe”.

“It’s a really big gap, especially as we see these getting more and more popular.”

The New Zealand Drug Foundation said it had also seen a sharp rise in the number of people asking them to test peptide drugs.

Since December last year, many peptides in New Zealand have been classified as prescription medicines. That means it’s illegal to sell them for therapeutic purposes.

Medsafe’s manager compliance manager Derek Fitzgerald said many new peptides were experimental, so there was little known about any benefits or potential harm.

Peptides imported without a prescription are seized and destroyed at the border.

*Name changed to protect identity

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

DOC’s becoming increasingly concerned about the 70 million litres of raw sewage being pumped into the sea around the capital near the marine reserve, putting several species at risk.

The beaches are off limits after Wellington’s Moa Point waste water treatment plant failed, flooding the facility and sending massive amounts of untreated waste into the city’s south coast and Taouteranga Marine Reserve.

There are plans to redirect the overflow much further out to sea during the plant’s repair, but that could take months.

Meanwhile the environmental impacts of the discharge could have significant consequences for marine life.

Department of Conservation’s principal marine science advisor Shane Geange told Checkpoint DOC were “extremely concerned”.

“From an ecological perspective, raw sewage and waste water entering a marine environment poses an immediate and serve threat to a wide range of ecological functions and species, but I think the primary concern is around the public health concern which greater wellington health authorities are actively managing.”

He said raw sewage carried bacteria, viruses and parasites that could impact sponges, muscles and fish that eat particles in the water.

“They can also accumulate in shell fish which make them unsafe for consumption.”

He said the sewage could also impact penguin and how they regulate their bodies.

“Potentially you could get significant implication for the penguin population.”

‘Pretty disappointing’

Geange said DOC was working with Greater Wellington Regional Council to figure out how far the sewage had spread.

“In the process of undertaking a bunch of sampling to determine the concentration of contaminates within the sea water and how far they have spread at the moment…”

The marine reserve is 2km from the waste water pipe.

He said the sea water would “rapidly” dilute the sewage, but not enough to destroy the contaminates.

Geange said mass fatality was his worst fear, but was highly unlikely.

“It’s pretty disappointing from an environmental perspective,” he said.

‘Environmental disaster’ – Wellington Mayor

Wellington’s mayor Andrew Little earlier told Morning Report there must be an independent inquiry into what happened, which he’s labelled a “catastrophic failure” and an “environmental disaster”.

“This is a sewage plant processing the sewage for a big city, and it has completely failed, it just completely stopped,” he said.

“Plants like this should not suffer the kind of catastrophic failure that we’ve seen.”

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Some businesses along the Welington’s South Coast say the major sewage spill is a “kick in the teeth” and they are already losing business.

An equipment failure at the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant on Wednesday flooded the site and is sending raw sewage spewing directly into the ocean at Tarakena Bay – rather than through a longer pipe, nearly 2 kilometres into Cook Strait.

Wellington Water hopes the long pipe would be fixed by the end of the weekend, but said it would likely be months before the plant was fully repaired.

People are being urged not to enter the water, collect seafood, or walk their dogs on the beach, and a rāhui is in place from Ōwhiro Bay to Breaker Bay.

Some local businesses already seeing the impact

Jonathan Dunbar, who works at the Onepu Coffee & Icecream Shack, said he usually sees people surfing on his walk to work, but on Thursday he said it was “a ghost town”, and they had also noticed a “substantial drop in business.”

He expected business on Waitangi Day to be a bit dull.

“I would anticipate that we’ll probably be opening later and closing early because everyone’s going to be at Oriental Parade or Petone.

“Since yesterday we’ve definitely noticed a decrease in customers,” said manager of the Botanist cafe and restaurant, Kais.

With good weather forecast, he hoped over the long weekend that people still came to the area for a walk

Cass, a barista at Centennial Coffee House, said they hadn’t noticed a reduction in customers but were concerned what foot traffic would be like over the long weekend.

“I think if people are staying away from the beach, then yeah, we’ll definitely lose customers.”

She said several customers she’d spoken to had been “appalled” by the situation.

Vicky Shen from Seaview Takeaways said she hadn’t noticed a difference in customer levels and hoped it would stay that way over the next few days.

Josh Bird, manager at Dive Shop Ocean Hunter, said Moa Point was a a popular area for people to dive and gather seafood or shellfish.

He said people did appear to be steering clear of Moa Point and they were also telling customer to go other places.

“It’s just another kick in the teeth for us,” he said

“We’ve been smashed by bad weather and all that sort of stuff,” he said. “So we just haven’t had any opportunities to really get out.”

He said they’d been hoping the back half of summer would be good, because their business had been affected by the poor conditions.

“So we’ve already been quiet beforehand and now we’re finally starting to get some [good] weather and it’s just another factor as well on top of it, preventing people from getting out in the water and feeding their families.”

Where Wellington was lucky, he said, was in that they had quite a bit of coastline still that wasn’t affected.

Divers deployed to investigate pipe

Wellington Water said it was deploying divers over the weekend to investigate the condition of a major pipe at the plant that got blocked up

The Moa Point plant’s lower floors completely flooded when sewage backed up in the 1.8km outfall pipe, which normally sends treated wastewater into the Cook Strait.

Raw sewage is spewing from a five metre pipe directly into the southern coastline, closing beaches to the public.

In an update to media, Wellington Water said cameras will be sent down the beginning of the long outfall pipe, and divers will check the end of it underwater.

Teams were working “as quickly as possible” to divert as much sewage from the short outfall to the long outfall pipe, the update said, as well to put screening in pace to remove items like sanitary pads from the wastewater being discharged.

Wellingtonians could expect to see discolouration around the coastline for about a week as teams emptied clarifiers and primary settling tanks to reduce odour.

They can also expect an increase in smell due to the plant being offline and work taking place on site.

“We will do all that we can to mitigate the impacts of odour,” Wellington Water said.

Wellington Water said the rāhui is still in place and covers anything the water can touch with the high or low tides.

“While it is in effect, no public activities should be undertaken on or around the beaches on the southern coastline.”

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand