The woman contracted a fatal infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba and died eight days after developing symptoms.
A Texas woman died from an infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba days after she cleaned her sinuses using tap water, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case report.
The woman, an otherwise healthy 71-year-old, developed “severe neurologic symptoms,” including fever, headache and an altered mental status, four days after she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite, the CDC report said.
She was treated for primary amebic meningoencephalitis — a brain infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba.” Despite treatment, the woman experienced seizures and died from the infection eight days after she developed symptoms, the agency said.
An investigation conducted by the agency found that the woman had not recently been exposed to fresh water but had performed the nasal irrigation using non-boiled water from the RV’s potable water faucet “on several occasions” before her illness.
The potable water tank, the investigation found, was filled before the woman bought the RV three months ago and could have contained contaminated water. The investigation also concluded that the municipal water system, which was connected to the potable water system and bypassed the tank, could have caused the contamination.
A bit misleading to put so definitely “tap water” in the headline when this was 3 month old RV water.
What’s the bit about the municipal water system there for? Aren’t they saying she could have used either
Point is, if you’re gonna flush your nose, boil the water at least. FFS.
That’s a lot of important context
It was campsite water actually. If you read closely.
I’m seeing many, many comments from people who have never used a neti pot or have questions. There are some basic answers, from a man who has, at times, safely used a neti pot.
You only use a neti pot with distilled water or previously boiled water. I use water fresh off a boil, cooled down just enough to where my nose can tolerate it. You can use that expensive gentle salt or table salt or sea salt, anything is fine.
You guys have no idea how satisfying it is when your head is all stuffed up with snot, blowing with a tissue is impossible…and you cycle some warm saline solution in your sinuses & a massive glob of 3-4 tablespoons of snot effortlessly glides out your other nostril into the sink & you can breathe again. It is a disgusting miracle when you’re sick, it is amazing.
Let’s clarify a few things – always use distilled or previously boiled water, as the brain-eating amoeba is present in most of North America’s waters. It can potentially survive water processing plants, and possibly domestic hot water tanks. The brain-eating amoeba can only survive in warm, moist environments…like your sinuses right next to your brain…it must be forcibly injected into there, so no cannonballs into the lake. No snorting untreated lake water. Normal swimming is okay.
You can use the neti pot too much. I was using it to aggressively clear out my sinuses for a year with limited success, and it turns out I am allergic to a mold or fungus at my workplace. Very frequent use of the neti pot only irritated my nose further, causing it to become inflamed (but not dangerous), and it would never ever cure the root problem: allergies. That was only fixed by pills & anti-histamine spray.
There is no need to be afraid of the neti pot, or the brain-eating amoeba, so long as you use the neti pot responsibly. Correctly.
It’s always been tempting to try a neti pot as my sinuses are always clogged and no amount of trying to blow my nose brings anything out
But stories like the amoeba scare me to hell and back, even if I did everything right it would still scare me.
So I’m an environmental microbiologist. If it’s any consolation, these incidents are very rare despite people doing similar things frequently. Even if you do snort water that’s home to Naegleria fowleri, infection isn’t common. If you take basic precautions, you really don’t have anything to worry about.
As a former permastuff allergy sufferer, I can’t recommend enough trying out triamcinolone (nasacort). I had tried nasal sprays in the 90s and early 2000s without any luck. About 5 or so years ago, my allergist recommend I give it a try again as a lot of formulas have come around since then and could work for me now. I couldn’t believe it, no more permastuffed and there’s smells everywhere. Learned that I love the smell of star jasmine flowers.
For me, a puff in each nostril in the morning and another puff as needed when blowing my nose doesn’t suffice (which is rare) has turned this perma-stuffed allergy sufferer into a not-perma-stuffed person.
I had a similar discovery a few years ago and now use Nasacort daily, but I find that all that mucus just goes down my throat instead of hanging around my sinuses like usual. Now it’s a battle between stuffy nose or clearing my throat constantly
you can buy medical saline from the grocery store.
To use a neti pot you use a saline solution. If you don’t trust the water you got at home (boiled first, naturally, both to sterilize and allow for easier dissolution of the salt), you can just buy a bag of NaCl solution in any pharmacy instead.
Just put the sealed bag into a pot of warm water first to bring it up to room temperature or slightly above. Flushing your sinuses with cold water ain’t fun.
Everything made sense at “Texas”.
I use saline I buy at the drug store for something like $1 a liter. No brain amoebas for me!
So not just tap water but her RVs tap water. The attempt at scare-mongering - tap water - like it could happen to anyone is annoying.
You can’t use tap water straight for Neti pots. I’m pretty sure every single neti pot tells you to boil the water first.
I hope it tells you to let the boiling water cool, too. I feel like that’s an important step.
… cue the optometrist meme
I found it, sorry for the delay friends
What is the optometrist meme?
Optometrist - “So these are your new contacts. If they irritate your eyes, you can clean your eyes with boiled water”
He grabs me and makes me look him directly in the eyes.
Optometrist - “Look at me. Look at me! Boiled water. Not boiling water. Water that has been booked than cooked. Understand?”
- it’s a thing from tumblr I believe, it’s longer and from the point of new off the person being spoken to.
*boiled then cooled. This phone is a nightmare for typing.
Booked then cooked sounds like a good album title ngl.
… booked than cooked?
Boiled than cooled. My phones autocorrect is a nightmare where I had to type most of this a single letter at a time
I updated my comment to have the meme
It doesn’t clean the sinuses as well. I personally run the boiled water through my soda stream, then directly into the face holes.
Which soda stream syrup do you use?
Maple.
I’m mentally hearing the blart from my jet as it hits peak carbonation, and mentally seeing the spray of water out the other nose and my god sir, you are a dilophosaur
The article does (which is a quote from the CDC), so the fact that the first comment got 34 updoots and is labelling this as fear mongering makes me sad that lemmy is becoming reddit faster than I thought
Way more people read the headline than the article itself, and the writers know that, but decided to only and specifically call it “tap water” in the headline. They knew it’ll get more clicks, and seemingly didn’t care about the people who will come away from it with a misconception.
We talkin’ ’bout the title. “… her RV’s tap water” at the end would be enough.
Yes, it is a pretty common step to let boiled water cool before consuming it in any regard.
It tells you to use boiled water.
What’s the difference between a neti pot and taking a shower? I’m pretty sure I get water up my nasal cavity every time I shower. Is the neti pot warning a cya thing or is there a greater risk?
Big difference between a little water in your schnozz and a deep irrigation of your sinus cavities.
Use (cold) boiled or distilled water
Its the same amoeba you can get swimming in lakes. It doesn’t happen every time but it CAN happen. It is grossly ignorant to not be cautious of it
Is it more likely to come from reservoirs then it is from wells that tap the water table?
Possibly I think? I personally just wouldnt risk it. All it takes is once.
You’re much much more likely to die from your preferred transit method to the lake than to get an ammeoba from it.
For that matter basically every food you eat has a higher likelihood to kill you. From bacteria, contamination, improper storage, improper cooking, even choking. These are all significantly more likely.
My point isn’t to make you too afraid to eat, but to explain why it’s not “grossly ignorant” to not be cautious of it. It’s essentially a non-concern. Even not putting sunscreen on every single day is a bigger risk taking activity than the odds of getting a brain ammeoba at a lake.
My brother in christ. Its such an easy thing to prevent. Just because its not a massive safety risk doesn’t mean its not still dangerous. Some people have clean enough tap water and will be fine. Others that dont will read what youve written and think “oh it wont happen to me” and not take any precautions. Its not like you have to avoid lakes or using neti pots. Wear nose clips and use known sanitized water.
Everything you mentioned about food by the way is something that can be prevented
Your comment seemed to imply your solution was to never swim in a lake. Obviously you should boil your neti pot water. There are a lot of reasons to do that. Wearing a nose clip is plenty reasonable. I truly thought you meant never swimming.
Everything you mentioned about food by the way is something that can be prevented
That’s not true. I can’t prevent a company from making a canning mistake. I can’t prevent a company contaminating food with a wide variety of things from bacterial to chemical. Choking is by itself accidental, I doubt you’ll find many choking victims that were trying to choke and die. I don’t inspect the kitchen and practices of every restaurant I eat at. The fact of it is most of the things related to food safety are out of the hands of the consumer. Short of preparing everything yourself from scratch you can’t prevent these things from happening. Most deaths related to food safety are caused by producer mistakes, not consumers.
According to a search I performed several years ago (meaning that my information may be outdated and that I’m no expert), the relevant bacteria have never demonstrated the ability to travel through droplets such as go through shower heads.
Well, they’re not sure if the water came directly from the RV tank or the local water supply, so it certainly could have been tap water.
The potable water tank, the investigation found, was filled before the woman bought the RV three months ago and could have contained contaminated water. The investigation also concluded that the municipal water system, which was connected to the potable water system and bypassed the tank, could have caused the contamination.
The agency stressed the importance of using distilled, sterilized or boiled and cooled tap water when people perform nasal irrigation to reduce the risk of infection and illness.
Sounds like the general idea is also just don’t use tap water directly out of the tap if you want to run water through your sinuses (which is where these infections come from). They aren’t saying that tap water is unsafe to drink. I don’t see this as fear mongering at all.
It could, with warming temperatures the bacteria is moving north. Showing up in areas unfamiliar with it
But you’re way more likely to get it by swimming and just don’t pour water up your nose
Buy Nestle’s hidden-branded renamed shit instead! That’s not literally just stolen tap water!
The potable water in the Deregulated Texas Oblast is safe. Right? Did she have United Healthcare supplemental insurance?
As a fellow American who hasn’t had to put up with this nonsense in my state but still lives in this era of fascist billionaire overrun, I now have a better idea what it must feel like to live in Texas. But Jesus fuck, fix your
waterutilitiesgovernmenteducationsocietyshit.Gotta say, brain-eating amoebas are one of my fears.
Irrational fear is one of the first symptoms
Oh good, this is a very rational fear so we should be safe.
This is why I only use river water
I only clean my head holes with hard liquor.
Neti pots and similar have very, very clear warnings that the water needs to be sterilized.
Is it the powder that I’m dumping into the water every time? I was just doing it to follow instructions. If it’s because of this, then thank goodness!
[edit]I was definitely wrong, and there are some good guides on getting distilled water on YouTube! check 'em out[/edit]
That powder is salt and will not sterilize the water. Used distilled water.
Doesn’t boiled filtered water work fine too?
To be fair: some things you shouldn’t cheap out on (as noted by the deceased woman in this post).
Is that cheaping out? How do you know for certain that supposedly distilled water was properly distilled, stored, and never contaminated before or after opening?
Bonus risk if you live in the United States where they’re gutting federal safety agencies
I mean… I get the FDA isn’t the trustful advisory it once was, but if I had a few dollars to choose between the “sterilized” gallon jug and a nasal blast from a Texan KOA campsite, I know what’d I’d choose.
I’d go with neither and use water I personally filtered and sterilized for the sake of certainty and safety even if it came from a jug labelled “distilled”.
If you’re gonna do that level of paranoia, the easy fix is to boil or distill your own water
Reread my post lol
Boiled, yes. Filtered…well there’s so many different filtration methods of varying intensity the safest answer is “no”
Because someone’s gonna use a britta jug…
Filtered and boiled, not or.
Don’t need to both
I’m gonna and you can’t stop me!
It does.
From this point on I absolutely will! Thanks!
It’s saline. So salt and baking soda
If you read the fucking instructions you’ll find it says use distilled water. But why read the instructions on a medical device when you can get your brains eaten instead?!
To be fair, I made this error before. I was like why do they have those dumbass neti pots when you can just use shower water for free? Then that night I read about brain eating amebas and freaked tf out. In a panic I tried to boil some water to rinse my sinuses with, and since I was so panicked, I didn’t wait long enough to let the water cool completely, and I’m pretty sure I burnt my sinuses and maybe even the part of my brain that’s right there. I had a splitting headache for like a month and thought I was gonna die n had the brain eating ameba. I think in hindsight what’s more likely is my sinuses and everything were burnt and my body was freaking out trying to fix it. 0/10 do not recommend.
Use a neti pot and use boiled or distilled water. Don’t be a dummy like me.
I won’t, I’ll be a different kind of dummy.
Your Alzhaimer’s chance just increased dramatically.
I’m very aware. It was the dumbest shit I’ve done in my life. It absolutely fucked with my short term memory and even my speech. It’s taken years to feel semi back to normal. I still don’t feel all the way like I used to unfortunately, but I try not to dwell on it.
You just gave me a secondhand headache. Please be careful.
This wasn’t the tap waters fault. This was the rv water tanks fault, most likely. Most people pretty much never clean\sanatize them.
Neti pot instructions typically state you need to use distilled or boiled water. You should follow these instructions regardless of the quality of your municipal water. It does not hurt to do so
It does not hurt to do so
Unless, like another commenter, you panic and forget to let the boiled water cool enough!
Pro tip, boil water and put it in the freezer for later! /s
Squirt ice up your nose!
But for real, boiling water and keeping it in a container for later is a common strategy in many places.
Those icicles reach places even a pinky can’t hit
Yeah. And q-tips say not to use them in your ears. Everyone wants to avoid a lawsuit.
Yea…they do…. Because you can fuck up your ears at worst and cause an earwax impaction at best. Im pretty surprised theres so much ignorance on the health comm
My friend, i have some baaad news for you
I really don’t think you do. It’s an extremely rare event in treated public water systems in the US. The amoeba aren’t really suited to survive in that water.
It’s been found in drinking systems in multiple countries, including Australia and the US.
But generally speaking, given how the sinuses are an express highway to the brain, you want anything you drench them with to be utterly sterile. Tap water isn’t anyway by its nature.
she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite
oh, that sounds gross. Way to many points of possible contamination.
Isn’t precaution number one when using neti pots to never do it with plain tap water?
Yes, but precaution number one when driving or riding in a motor vehicle is putting on your seatbelt and tons of folks dgaf about that either
it’s normal to use tap water anyway.
“Normal” and “supposed to” don’t always line up.
Yes.
You’re supposed to use distilled water, genius as stupid mistakes go, that one’s pretty low on the dumb-fuck-o-meter.
you can also boil the water for 5 minutes
I know I have an extremely biased experience set having been a health inspector in a place full of RV slums, but I would never trust any portion, interior or exterior, including internal systems, of a used RV.
I won’t even drink the water I put in my RV, even if it’s from my house, let alone shove it up my nose.
