Brain-Eating Amoeba Scare Spurs Utility To Action

By Sara Jerome
@sarmje

A community in Louisiana that lost a young boy to a so-called “brain-eating amoeba” two years ago is still working to secure its water supply from the deadly pest.

The amoeba, which infiltrated the drinking water in St. Bernard Parish, LA, three years ago, took the life of a four-year old boy. “The child who died [in 2013] in St. Bernard Parish while visiting from Mississippi, had been playing a long time on a Slip'n'Slide connected to a household water faucet. It took about two weeks for the [Centers for Disease Control] to determine that the child had a Naegleria fowleri infection,” NPR reported.

The event that rocked the community continues to have ramifications today. The New Orleans Advocate reported in October:

St. Bernard Parish residents must endure high chlorine levels in their water for a while longer as the state performs tests to confirm a brain-eating amoeba no longer is plaguing the parish’s water system. Just how much longer is not clear. At a meeting of the Parish Council’s Water and Sewer Committee, parish officials said the so-called “60-day chlorine burn” could end by Oct. 14, almost three months after it began. But state Department of Health and Hospitals officials said earlier in the day that the burn likely would last at least three more weeks.

There was a point last year when it had seemed that the fight against the brain-eating amoeba might be a closed chapter for this community. “Federal testing in February 2014 declared the parish system clear of the amoeba,” the report said.

But the community found the single-celled Naegleria fowleri amoeba in its system again this past July. It immediately took steps to address the incursion.

The state also issued emergency water regulations in the aftermath of the 2013 tragedy. The rule required that water systems maintain higher disinfectant levels and boost water sampling sites by 25 percent, the Associated Press reported.

In water systems that use chloramine or free chlorine, "each must now maintain a continuous level of at least 0.5 milligrams per liter of the disinfectant in its water," The Times-Picayune reported.

Naegleria fowleri can be found in lakes, ponds, rivers, untreated swimming pools, untreated well water and municipal water, and in thermally polluted water, such as power plant runoff. It appears to be a summertime phenomenon, since the amoeba thrives in warm water.

For similar stories, visit Water Online’s Drinking Water Disinfection Solutions Center.

Image credit: "science," Robert Couse Baker© 2011, used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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