It’s a beautiful July weekend, and you and your dad bod are knee-deep in Elk Lake, keeping an eye on the kids and chowing down on a hamburger. It’s hot sunshine and cool water and school-free children having fun all afternoon.

Sure, it doesn’t smell exactly great out here, but you did eat a lot of coleslaw earlier. And oops, there’s a little bluish-green sand in your wich, so you quick-dunk it in the lake, pop it in your mouth and DIE A TERRIBLE URBAN PICNIC DEATH!

This senseless loss was brought to you by blue-green algae in the water, and the many municipal bylaws prohibiting such a thing as a free lunch. The point of our little vignette is that under the right conditions — such as summer picnics — lakes, ponds and streams in British Columbia develop a dangerous blue-green algae “boom,” which, due to an early typographic error, is more commonly known as a dangerous blue-green algae “bloom.”

Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, are microscopic organisms that naturally occur in water bodies around the world. They are sort of halfway between plants and animals — teenagers, if you will — and they come in all sorts of colours and sizes, so long as it is blue-green and very small.

What’s the big deal? Well, blue-green algae produce nasty, dangerous poisons — neurotoxins, hepatotoxins and dermatotoxins — that rival the weapons of mass destruction we didn’t find in........

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