Maybe someone already e-mailed you the warning, the one that claims a boy is dying from a flesh-eating bacteria he got while swimming at Ala Moana Beach.

If not, it might be in your in-box right now.

In the past week, the dire-sounding message has zipped through the Internet like a fast-spreading virus.

But it's a hoax.

"This is a bogus thing as far as we know," said Watson Okubo, supervisor for monitoring and analysis section of the Health Department's Clean Water Branch.

The water at Ala Moana Beach is "as good as it can be," Okubo said.

City water quality inspectors say the same thing.

And no one in the Hawai'i medical community has stepped forward to tell health officials they are treating a child fighting for his life while being eaten alive by bacteria, Okubo said.

It's becoming an urban legend, he said. Okubo has fielded calls from the Marines at Kane'ohe, worried citizens and the state attorney general's office, which was planning a picnic at the beach.

The e-mail, whose original author is unknown, sounds as genuine as any home-spun warning can.

"My Mom's boss's friend went to the beach last weekend with her whole family," it states. "After they came home, everyone had a fever and a sore throat. Now her son is fighting for his life at the hospital. He has flesh-eating bacteria in his leg."

Sunny Lee-Oshiro thinks it's true. A girlfriend sent her the e-mail last week.

"She says it's for real," LeeOshiro said. "She got it from a reliable source. We have to get to the bottom of it."

Wendy Pitner also believes the e-mail because she doesn't quite trust the state. After she got it Friday, she quickly forwarded the warning to 50 people.

"I don't think the state has been very forthcoming about information," she said. "I am kind of skeptical."

One thing is certain: Months after heavy rain-related runoff and 48 million gallons of diverted sewage flowed into the Ala Wai Canal in March, the women remain jittery about the water quality at nearby Ala Moana Beach.

Neither of them will let their children swim there.

The April 6 death of Oliver Johnson six days after he plunged into the sewage-contaminated waters of the Ala Wai Boat Harbor heightened fears about the invisible threat of virulent germs in the water. Johnson died from organ failure due to septic shock brought on by an infection of Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium in the same family that causes cholera.

The e-mail plays on those fears, Okubo said.

"This could be malicious," he said.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.