cw death
A Florida resident has died of a rare infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba after using unboiled tap water to clean their sinuses, local and federal officials say.
The Florida Health Department said the case involves a resident of Charlotte County but specific details were not immediately released. The CDC said the patient died on Monday.
The resident, whose identity has not been made public, is believed to have contracted Naegleria Fowleri after using unboiled tap water to rinse their sinuses daily, according to the CDC.
“DOH-Charlotte, as part of a multi-agency response, is continuing to investigate how this infection occurred and is working with the local public utilities to identify any potential links and make any necessary corrective actions,” the health department said.
Naegleria Fowleri can infect people when water containing the single-celled organism enters the body through the nose, usually while swimming or diving in ponds, lakes or rivers. In rare cases it can also be found in pipes connected to tap water.
“When water contaminated with Naegleria is sniffed up the nose, the ameba can travel to the brain,” according to the CDC website. “This causes the disease Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), which destroys brain tissue and usually results in death.”
Symptoms usually occur between 1 and 12 days after infection and may include headache, fever, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms may progress to a stiff neck, confusion, seizures and other neurological symptoms.
An infection with the brain-eating amoeba is nearly always fatal, killing 153 out of 157 patients since the early 1960s. Most cases were found in southern U.S. states, especially Texas (39) and Florida (38).
Although Naegleria Fowleri is a heat-loving ameba and is usually found in warm freshwater environments, recent infections have also been found in northern U.S. states as cooler regions have become warmer and drier.
Always happens like once a year and freaks me out for a couple days even though I know the math.
If you’re gonna use a Nettie pot boil your water first. This is not the only reason. Also you mostly just shouldn’t use Nettie pots.
even though I know the math.
An infection with the brain-eating amoeba is nearly always fatal, killing 153 out of 157 patients since the early 1960s. Most cases were found in southern U.S. states, especially Texas (39) and Florida (38).
ok getting it is very rare but still scary
Oh yeah if you get it you’re fucked, it’s just that getting it is winning one of the world’s worst lotteries
THE CHANCES ARE LOW BUT NEVER 0 :screm-a: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
That also goes for the water quality standards for any other pathogen, the aim is to minimize the odds of catching it. Kind of disturbing if you think about it too much.
Can I use bottled water for shit like that or CPAP? People keep saying "bottled water is just tap water," but I've been using that for my machine :scared:
distilled water is cheap, but I mean... I don't think I want to keep buying it
The cpap humidifier has to turn the water into vapor for you to breath it in I think that would kill stuff. Also you can use tap water in your cpap if you boil it first
The reason you use distilled water is because of mineral buildup boiling it will still leave a gross film on the chamber since the boiled water still has solutes.
The humidifier probably doesn't get to high enough temp to sterilize it, they evaporate water through large surface area or ultrasound. Using distilled water is still better so you don't get scale on the tank and stuff.
I don't use tap water because of the incredible amount of salt in my tap water 😌
wtf where do you live that has salt tap water? What even is the point then?
America
It's not saline like sea water it just deposits a thin layer of salt and scale on things when it dries
Bottled water has to be treated first before it's bottled, however if you want to be safe there's always boiling it or using water treatment pills that will dissolve.
iirc flushing your sinuses works for some problems but you need to be safe about it and you probably shouldn't do it often enough to justify owning a dedicated pot for it.
Yeah if you’re going to flush your sinuses you’re probably better off using a saline rinse, both because they come sterile and it won’t fuck up your nose
i had a Ear/Nose/Throat doctor suggest a netti pot, but they specified to only use boiled water or distilled water. People are talking about netti pots ITT but nobody is talking about humidifiers... are those ok I wonder? Wikipedia said the amoeba has to go through your cribiform plate, which is a porous bone between your nasopharynx and brain.
According to a short google “There is no evidence that Naegleria fowleri can spread through water vapor or aerosol droplets, such as shower mist or through a humidifier”
You pretty much have to shoot a good amount of contaminated water up into your nasal passages
I don't think you'll get amoebas out of your air humidifier, but you'll sure get legionella.
You can get humidifiers that actually boil the water into steam to sanitize it. Costs more in electricity and initial price than an ultrasonic humidifier, but then you don't need to use distilled water and don't have to worry about mineral dust all over your room
The one time I tried using one of those it didn’t really clear the sinus infection I had
Lots of "stuffed" noses are actually inflamed blood vessels, which are further inflamed by all the blowing.
I like how most of our nose related natural reflexes are self destructive
This just reminds me of how I have been hearing people talk about how we need to apply world systems theory fractally and how California and New York are the Imperial cores within the US and there are semi-periphery areas within the borders of the U.S. relative to more prosperous areas. As inequality increases and we have further degradation of infrastructure, the maladies of the periphery will be found more and more in the Rust Belt and the rural South.
problem with that analysis is that impoverished chuds are voting for it to be done to themselves and their neighbors. the politics and economies of lib blue states are not why the former confederacy makes itself into a christofascist hellhole.
The issue is that poor people do not vote. While the Democrats have never been a real working class party, after the neoliberal turn and their bet on the fact that "poor and non-white voters have nowhere to go" so they only had to take into account the concerns of white suburban "swing voters". So voting is disproportionate among almost all axes of privilege, White people vote more than non-white, wealthy more than poor, etc. And the fact that the Democrats are the lesser of two evils in that they just double down on all the deregulation and disinvestment in infrastructure, rather than actively push it forward, means that they are not really seen as a real alternative in these issues.
The other point, further delving into this issue is that the Democrats are just an alternate faction of capital in terms of the interest they represent; there is some superficial logic in terms of voting with your boss and for the extractive industries that your boss is involved with to increase the chance you will have a job the next year. Along with the fact that in rural communities the local gentry will be taste setters and be seen as local leaders and philanthropists helping the community, further giving the working class in the region reason to vote for such interests, due to the poor alternatives offered by the Democrats.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-american-gentry-wyman-elites/620151/
Oh, great...
Although Naegleria Fowleri is a heat-loving ameba and is usually found in warm freshwater environments, recent infections have also been found in northern U.S. states as cooler regions have become warmer and drier.
i get what people mean when they say this, but America is not a 3rd world country in either sense of the term
America is an imperialist superpower. Its standard of living being so terrible is less a reflection of its underdevelopment/overexploitation (like the third world) than of its own reactionary nature.
Earth is the third world from the sun though, so maybe the whole planet is third world
Yeah it’s usually only like 2 a year. Your odds of dying in a car crash on the drive home from the lake are far higher than getting an amoeba from the lake.
In communist China the tap water is so unsafe that __________
:unsus: i thought these things can only be contracted in lakes and shit
Usually people use a neti pot to flush their sinuses and it tells you on the box to never use tap water.
some fool does this ever few years. guess the warning needs to be bigger.
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2: Couldn't be me because I was too lazy to boil water
Amoeba are pretty tough and if a water purification system isn't up to code (and a shocking number aren't) it can be hard to maintain a high enough standard of hygiene.
Florida
I'm surprised there was something for the amoebas to eat :brainworms:
People in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world under a boil water advisory, jesus christ I thought that was only reserved for Canadian First Nations reserves :kkkanada:
Only if it's going in your sinuses, and that goes for everyone everywhere.
I mean, this could happen to anyone. Getting water in your sinuses is not very uncommon when showering is it? Happens to me practically every day.
ANYWAY it is only supposed to occur in untreated fresh water that is between 30degrees and 40degrees so thankfully it doesn't exist here in the UK. Thank fuck.
A freak accident like this could basically happen to anyone yeah, but I think the fact that this person was rinsing their sinuses daily with it made the odds a lot worse.
I mean, this could happen to anyone.
Why doesn't this happen to DeSantis? :rage-cry:
I don't know but I just realised that there's a caveat "untreated water" thing going on and now I'm wondering how the fuck this water is in tap water in some states. Seems like America doesn't treat its water properly?
Given the state of US infrastructure, nothing like that surprises me anymore. It makes perfect sense that some libertarians decided they don't want to pay taxes for water treatment because "you can buy bottled water" and closed down the local waterworks.
In half of Florida we don’t really have treated water at all, my hometown was all well water.
My childhood home had such high iron in the water the showers had a nice orange coating of rust on the plastic walls.
"Untreated" might just be referring to them not treating it themselves after drawing it from the faucet. If you're using a neti pot, then you can't use tap water unless you boil it. Tap water is treated to be safe to drink, not safe enough to be run through sinuses.
so wait.. like would the saline solution in a Netti-pot be enough to stop this from happening or should I have always been boiling netti-pot water?
.... Cause it sounds like no-ones gonna warn me when parasites have plagued my water supply until it's too late.
all netti-pots should say in the direction booklet to only use distilled water or boiled tap water.
a doctor told me to start using netti pots a few years back due to my sinus problems and the biggest pain in the ass was having to boil water constantly so I stopped using it lmao
this appliance is incredibly useful
https://www.zojirushi.com/app/category/water-boilers-warmers
Boil any water you're planning on sticking up your nose or use distilled water
Dammit House you should have checked the cops' weed sprinkler water
