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Fatal brain-eating microbe found in Lake Jackson, Texas water supply
- dustinmoris 6y agoStart panic buying water now.
- plazmatic 6y agoHEBs in that area have lines out the door with people trying to buy water. "MAGA"
- userbinator 6y agoAuthorities in Lake Jackson later said that people could begin using the water, but must boil it before drinking it. The CDC says people cannot get infected by swallowing contaminated water Those two statements seem to contradict each other.
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- frostburg 6y agoThe water needs to enter the nose, but given the design of our throat it's a good idea to boil it anyway.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoYup. As experienced by anyone who was drinking something while they read or heard something funny. Suddenly, you have your drink coming out of your nose.
- toyg 6y agoThe fact that an air intake borders our brain is a massive security weakness in our "intelligent" design (the quotes are for sarcasm). It's like allowing HTTP calls from your webservers to be routed, in some circumstances, to your not-firewalled, not-SSL, not-password-protected database. Like building a massive bank vault with all sorts of protective layers, then adding a small unlocked door that opens on the street. I just hate that the smallest sinus infection can affect my overall system by producing massive headaches, or that these mofo organisms can just trek up my nose and feast on my brain cells. Clearly the Earth atmosphere is just too welcoming; selection on this trait was never forced, and here we are. The minute we start making cyborg augmentations to improve filtering of our air ducts, I'll be the first in line.
- phkahler 6y agoThe sense of smell is ancient and has served animals well since forever. That's why the close coupling. The olfactory bulb is like a part of the brain in the nasal cavity. Your eyes are actually an outgrowth of your brain and they're exposed right out in front. The eyes have their own extra defenses though.
- toyg 6y agoGood point. Still, we have highly-effective sensors in other parts of our bodies, further away from the brain, and surely we could drop that check somewhere else. At least when it comes to eyes, one can make the argument that they should enable split-second reactions to run from that predator as soon as you spot it, so they should be as close as possible to the mainframe... whereas nobody is going to die if they can only smell wolf poo a second later.
- jniedrauer 6y ago>whereas nobody is going to die if they can only smell wolf poo a second later. I'm still alive today because I can detect smoke very early. This ability has saved me from indoor electrical fires and wildfires. Hunter gatherers who lived in makeshift shelters probably depended even more frequently on this ability.
- sokoloff 6y agoWould detecting the smoke 1 second later have made the difference? (I think that's the essence of GP's comment.)
- jniedrauer 6y agoSignals can travel relatively fast across the entire length of a human central nervous system. Proximity to the brain likely benefits signal-to-noise ratio more than speed.
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- mcarmichael 6y agoAt worst, the Lake Jackson authorities are being excessively cautious. When drinking, there's a slight chance of some liquid not being swallowed, after all. Given the recent fatality, erring on the side of caution seems quite understandable. If I were living in the region served by Brazosport Water Authority, I'd be more interested in the criteria used to proclaim the safety of the rest of the service area, especially after perusing this: https://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/09/Brain-Eating-AmoebaScoffs-Chlorine-Water.html
- nabla9 6y agoThey don't exactly contradict if you read them carefully. They were probably answer to different question. CDC is right. The route from bacteria to brain goes trough olfactory nerves and tract that connect directly to the brain. Just swallowing water is not dangerous.
- inglor_cz 6y agoThis is a known risk for people who rinse their nasal passages with salt water. I started doing this on a doctor's advice after a long bout of cold and I always boil the water, let it cool down and only then do the thing.
- switch11 6y agoyeah, you have to be very careful when doing this people in many countries have died from this it's very rare. However, you don't want to be the poster child for it
- kwanbix 6y agoDied for cleaning their nose with water?
- dijit 6y agoYes, exactly. It sounds ridiculous, but people also die from drinking water. The key difference is understanding that it’s not the “water”, it’s what’s in the water. As an interesting aside; this is also why water kills electrical components, pure water is not a good conductive. But what’s in the water is.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAnd since water is such a good ionic solvent, ionic salts dissolve readily and rapidly in water, making water electrically conductive.
- farseer 6y agoShouldn't the salt kill the microbes? All you have to do is leave your salted water for a while.
- sva_ 6y agoAs far as I know the solution used for sinus rinses is isotonic to the cells. Although I'm not sure if those microbes need the same salt content as humans (0.9%), but I would presume so.
- just-juan-post 6y agoI would like to point out the similarities between this and many Coronavirus stories about individuals and long term complications. In this story there have been 34 deaths due to the microbe in the last 10 years. The affected area is a town of 26,000. Yet somehow this story make it to the front page of an international computer news web site. Examine what you read.
- lame-robot-hoax 6y agoShould they not report it?
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIt's a bit of a horror story but actually has very little real world impact. It's got entertainment value but you might make the case that it's basically just clickbait.
- ekianjo 6y ago> Infections are rare in the US, with 34 reported between 2009 and 2018. Is this in the US as a whole or only in the local area in question?
- frostburg 6y agoThe amoeba isn't very good at getting to people's brains, but once it's there the fatality rate is 95%. So it's rare, but it's still dangerous to have a lot of people exposed.
- dbt00 6y agoThe entire USA. And 30 of the 34 were from swimming ("recreational water" sources), not drinking water.
- chii 6y ago> Yet somehow this story make it to the front page of an international computer news web site. what's news-worthy isn't the same as what's high impact. Car crashes kill so many people every day, yet you barely hear about it. The most you'd hear about is a high speed chase or a high way pile up. Because it's rare and interesting. So definitely examine what you read, but also learn about recency bias and such to prevent being "tricked" into thinking the wrong thing about the true state of the world.
- civil_engineer 6y agoCNN story that documents a positive test for naegleria fowleri in splash pad water at Lake Jackson civic center where the six-year-old victim visited: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/26/us/brain-eating-amoeba-found-in-texas-water-supply-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/26/us/brain-eating-amoeba-found-... It is unlikely that the splash pad infestation emanated from the public drinking water supply.
- sjg007 6y agoEh? Splash pad water is from the public drinking supply, that's how it works. Same with pools, your bath etc...
- sokoloff 6y agoI think GP's point is that there are many other sources of contamination after the water is placed in the splash pool.
- sjg007 6y agoI am not sure you know how splash pads work. There is no pool. If there is a pool then it's regulated like a swimming pool.
- sokoloff 6y agoIf you think that there is no possibility for environmentally-sourced contamination in something like this, then we simply disagree. https://hulafrog.com/brazoria-county-south-tx/lake-jackson-civic-center-splash-pad https://hulafrog.com/brazoria-county-south-tx/lake-jackson-c...
- sjg007 6y agoThe amoeba did not come from a kid. It came from the water supply.
- nightfly 6y agoCan someone update the title to include the actual city? Fight clickbait!
- jeffhou 6y agoLake Jackson, Texas btw (for anyone checking the comments first)
- tyingq 6y agoApparently, it's the Brazosport Water Authority, and the warning applies to 6 cities and 2 prisons: "Angleton, Brazoria, Richwood, Oyster Creek, Clute and Rosenberg, Texas, as well as for the Dow Chemical plant in Freeport and the Clemens and Wayne Scott Texas Department of Criminal Justice corrections facilities." https://www.ketv.com/article/8-texas-cities-alerted-to-a-brain-eating-amoeba-found-in-water-supply/34176146 https://www.ketv.com/article/8-texas-cities-alerted-to-a-bra... The prisons is a bad situation, as I imagine the prisonsers don't have much they can do about the tap in their cell. Some allow immersion heaters, some don't, and the prisoners typically have to buy them with funds their families provide.
- mhh__ 6y agoIs it clickbait if it's on bbc.co.uk?
- partyboat1586 6y agoYes
- mhh__ 6y agoWhy? It's for people in the UK, it's only clickbait if you don't bother to read the article and find out where
- ascorbic 6y agoIt's the BBC. "Lake Jackson, Texas" isn't going to mean anything to most of its audience.
- j0ej0ej0e 6y agoisn't this actually fine to drink and only any issue when you put through your nasal passages?
- pmorici 6y agoThat is my understanding.
- j0ej0ej0e 6y agoSeems a bit over the top to put this warning out when it is fine to drink. I don't understand why you wouldn't boil water before putting it through your system like that anyway. Isn't it always recommended in that scenario...
- yissp 6y agojust pray nobody makes you laugh while you're drinking
- booleandilemma 6y agoThe mouth and the nose are too close to be risking it though.
- noobermin 6y agoPeople need to accept that the US is a degenerating state.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoOnly if your knowledge of the US is restricted to the media’s framing
- cheschire 6y agoThat's just as reductive as saying the whole thing is degenerating. Plenty of places in the U.S. are moving backwards. A lot of population centers are not though, so it's not fair to say that all of the U.S. is degenerative, but it's also not as fair to say it's only the media's framing.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIt’s true the media only focuses on long-tail events to generate revenue. Studies have shown people who consume more media like this are actually less informed about reality, because their mindset starts veering from groking ‘the norm’ of the situation.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoIt’s solely the media’s framing if the claim is that the US as a whole is degenerating, which was his claim. I never made any claim as to the nuanced state of the US, so you’re responding to a claim I never made which is a strawman.
- rasz 6y agoDont you ozone your water in US?
- cheschire 6y agoThe federal drinking water regulations are here: https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national-primary-drinking-water-regulations https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national... Anything not on that list is not blanket applicable to the U.S.
- boltefnovor 6y ago2020 has it all.
- jcims 6y agoI just want to remind everyone what naegleria fowleri look like: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130814-amoeba-brain-naegleriafowleri-infection-parasite/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/8/130814-amoeba... https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/brain-eating-amoeba-kills-again-heres-how-it-kills-and-how-to-avoid-it/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/brain-eating-amoeba-...
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- Aardwolf 6y agoThanks I hate it
- el_dev_hell 6y agoZero hyperbole: That first image from National Geographic ruined me for several hours. I switched off my laptop and laid in bed. No idea why. I've come back to this comment to post this. It's an eerie face like image (I refuse to look back at it) and it's seriously troubling.
- sizzle 6y agoDo you have a disliking of clowns by any chance? Cause that's instantly where my mind went when I saw this microbe. Eerie looking, to say the least.
- NamTaf 6y agoAdam Savage's podcast Still Untitled did a really fantastic episode [1] back around Halloween 2018 where they had a molecular biologist come on and talk about his work. The stories he tells are absolutely fascinating and I thoroughly encourage everyone wiht any interest in molecular biology and crazy stories to check it out. I won't go into it because I'll spoil it, but suffice it to say that normal episodes are 20-30 mins, this one went for 70 mins and the first time I listened to it I immediately restarted it to listen to it again. The first half of the episode is a story that gets more and more insane as it unfolds. Afterwards, he goes into a few other shorter stories of his work. Anyway, the link to this is because there's one story from about 38:15 to about 45 minutes in that discusses brain-eating amoebas he was involved in. It's not this exact one, but it's related to it. I recommend anyone who finds this interesting to check it out. Although there's video on youtube, you really don't need video for it and your podcast app of choice should have an audio version of it. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU
- CreRecombinase 6y agoJoe Derisi is a really incredible scientist. A "founding father" of genomics.
- legohead 6y agoJust watched that, thanks, it was fascinating. I'm sort of confused though -- didn't this guy basically prove that the carrier for Ebola could very well be reptiles and specifically Boa constrictors? The wikipedia on Ebola mentions bats and monkeys, no mention of Boas at all!
- keeganpoppen 6y agothanks for encouraging people to actually listen to it because it is great, and Joe DeRisi (the molecular biologist in question) is super engaging
- hexbinencoded 6y agoN. fowleri is difficult to contract but it's often fatal when it happens. This is the least of their problems. LJ is between Houston and Corpus, which is a weather events, floods, and industrial petrochem disaster area. Honestly, it would be better long-term to relocate residents who are in the paths of increasingly-powerful and numerous hurricanes to the northwest rather than taxpayers subsidizing time-and-time again the stupidity of allowing people to build and rebuild neighborhoods in flood plains and right next to oil refineries. Climate change.
- koboll 6y agoIt's pretty simple to prevent neighborhoods from having to be "rebuilt" after a hurricane: require all construction to be concrete. Such laws are common in Florida and the Caribbean and probably need to be put in place along the Gulf Coast too.
- jofer 6y agoThat would be counter-productive. The risk from hurricanes in this area (i.e. relatively inland western gulf coast) isn't wind. It's water. Build on stilts, not concrete. There's a reason we build the way we do here. We're not stupid. Concrete just _guarantees_ that the building is uninhabitable in 2-3 years due to the shrink-swell clays in the soils here. Wood flexes. Brick and concrete don't.
- joehandzik 6y agoAre we proposing to relocate every resident and business along the US gulf coast? I don't think Texas is more or less susceptible to hurricanes than the rest of the gulf. And from the looks of the northwest, there's a chance we'd be relocating folks into the path of worsening wildfires. Climate change is serious and we should respond with corresponding urgency, but let's not pretend that there's anywhere in the US that is 100% guaranteed to be a safe haven.
- jliptzin 6y agoThe inland northeast (Upstate NY, Vermont, NH, Maine, etc) seems to be pretty well insulated from climate change for now.
- bluedays 6y agoCrazy. I remember last year when the guy died from this thing. I live in the same area as The Fantasy Lake park where he got it, so it was pretty memorable. I wonder if this means that we are starting to see this virus more often. If we are why? Is this a result of global warming? Or is this just the availability heuristic? I hope it's just a mental bias on my part, because the alternative is terrifying.
- bluedevil2k 6y agoIt’s not a virus, it’s an amoeba.
- hoten 6y agoYes, there's a theory that it's becoming more common. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri
- jdeibele 6y agoI used to rinse my nose with tap water. Then this story came to my attention abut 2 years ago and I've never done it since. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/rare-brain-eating-amoebas-kill-seattle-woman-leave-doctors-bracing-for-possible-repeats/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/rare-brain-...
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