https://www.sciencenews.org/article/unsterilized-tap-water-rinse-sinuses-brain-eating-amoebas-health-unsafe
Two new studies document rare cases in which people who rinsed sinuses with unsterilized tap got infected with brain-eating amoebas.
One PPM of chlorine is enough to kill most amoeba in about 10 mins.
If amoeba can survive in tap water where you are at, you probably shouldn't drink the water without filtering and boiling it first anyway.
Also, get some multi-chemical water test strips as well. While those don't tell the full story, they can be useful if deciding to have your water tested at a lab. (Test strips a decent enough at detecting chlorine, some metals, salts, etc. I don't know if they exist, but detection of disolved gasses, like natural gas, would be a huge plus if you live in an area that has a lot of oil drilling.)
Everyone should spend at least a few bucks to know what they will be drinking at home on a regular basis, IMHO.
While those don't tell the full story, they can be useful if deciding to have your water tested at a lab.
Everyone should spend at least a few bucks to know what they will be drinking at home on a regular basis, IMHO.
Lab testing is going to be a waste of money for most people not using well water, unless you have a strong reason to suspect something is up aside from test-strip reaults. Especially seeing as how the water chemistry is going to change at least twice per year when the water provider switches from chlorine to the chloramines and vice-versa. And pretty much all providers will give you a report of exactly what's in the water on a monthly basis if you ask for it.
Lab results would be useful if you're serious about homebrewing beer and don't want to build up the water profile from scratch or really into baking, though. Just don't do it in the early Spring/Fall, because that's when the treatment chemicals switch and the results aren't going to be representative of what the water is really like for that time of the year.
My stomach is super picky and I drink a ton of water. It doesn't take much to mess me up.
Even perfectly clean water will trigger my acid reflux, but that is more of a mechanical issue with my stomach, from what I understand. The bigger moral of the story here is not to be a raging alcoholic for many consecutive years...
I even get monthly water reports automatically due to the number of lawsuits my town has had because of water quality. Needless to say, my trust level is not set at maximum even for third-party reports paid for by the city.
You ain't wrong, but the redundancy makes me feel better.
But it's good enough for regular people. Very accurate test equipment costs tens of thousands of dollars and you have to recalibrate it every few months using very expensive consumables.
Nah. I paid $43 for my lead test via Virginia tech, as that's a concern I have with my new (very old) apt building: https://leadkit.hbbf.org
If you need to test for the common 9 dangerous items test, it's $160: https://mytapscore.com
That's one single test and you don't get equipment. You're just sending your sample to the lab, which has all the stuff. I mean that's a great option, but you're not getting accurate testing devices for that price.
IMHO, it shouldn't need to be. With test strips, my only intent is to see if there is something drastically off kilter. pH tests are likely the most reliable of any of them. If tap water pH is wildly off, there is likely something else wrong.
Excluding some cases, just a taste of the tap water should tell you volumes more than what a test strip might.
Hah. I've been swimming in freshwater lakes, rivers, and reservoirs for about 65 years. Ain't nothin' takin' me down.
Also a former water treatment plant operator, so I should probably not be quite so complacent. :)
Some places are worse than others, from what I understand. Also, I haven't had an issue with my brain being eaten after years of swimming in freshwater sources.
The above paper was about a place in Pakistan, so who knows what their water is like..
Some streams in some U.S. national parks advise against submerging your head in the water for the risk of getting brain eating amoebas.
I have only had to take extra precautions in costal areas. When I was a kid, I remember some fairly strict warnings about amoebas in places like Florida and up the East Coast to North Carolina. Honestly, I don't remember that many details since that was about 35 years ago. (Maybe it's about water temperature or water chemistry, or something. Dunno.)
Reminiscing aside, all fresh water has risks for one reason or another. If you are ever lost, stranded or even on a super long hike everything becomes exponentially more dangerous anyway. (Small risks become massive risks, basically.)
If there is anything you never fuck around with in the wild, it's a water source. Not only can it host a ton of things that can kill you or just make you sick, it also attracts other, bigger, critters. Nevermind that we need a fuck ton of water to drink ourselves and need to stay near water sources.
Nature is brutal.
I'm more concerned about e coli levels than amoeba. But Lord only knows what gets into the South Saskatchewan River system and what grows vigorously once the water slows down in Lake Diefenbaker.
At least I've stopped swimming in the runoff sloughs in cattle pastures. (Kids are all kinds of stupid!)
I miss being a kid in the country, sometimes. The stupidity was never ending and the risk->reward function always paid massive dividends.
TBH, we had super clean water where I grew up and there were bigger risks than getting covered in cow shit, which did happen on occasion. (My best friend at the time got his hands on some blasting caps one weekend. We probably weren't much older than 12 or 13 at the time....)
Sorry for the tangent. This conversation kicked up more nostalgia than I expected.
Sorry for the tangent. This conversation kicked up more nostalgia than I expected.
No problem.
Heh! You had blasting caps, we had carbide (my grandfather was still running an acetylene generator in his welding/machine/mechanic shop).
Thanks! I knew what PPM was, but I was having trouble visualizing how much chlorine was that in, say, a liter of water.
And there you go. 1 mg per liter does the trick, and it's standard!
Some people pour water up their nose. I saw someone doing it in the military. Said it felt great. I wasn't convinced.
I am genetically blessed with a chronic form of histamine allergies that keep my sinuses blocked. On bad days, I have to heat water, then let it cool, and then add a specific salt then use a medical pump to pump them all the way through my nostrils until they reach the back of my throat to make sure the canals are open. Doctor's orders and all. I assure you, we are not doing this for fun.
The results definitely feel great, the process is def miserable.
And the result is generally not amazing, just no longer "I want to take chunks out of my face with a rusty mellon baller until I can finally breath"
I have been doing it for quite a while now though I filter it via brita. But I imagine if the chlorine in the water is not killing that mf, no brita is gonna stop it either.
That being said, I am not %100 sure about how deeply this is researched though. For instance what is the mechanism by which this fella gets in the brain? Does it need to pass thru the blood brain barrier or is there a shortcut? Does this more commonly occur in people with immunodeficiency problems? The news quotes for instance
"All 10 of the people in the CDC study had one or more conditions that weakened their immune systems, including cancer or HIV/AIDS."
Seems like I may have been snorting brain eating amoebas into my nose wo knowing.
I think Kurzgesagt made a video about how these guys sneak into the brain, they follow the olfactory nerve I believe. They didn't evolve to eat brains, it's just an unhappy coincidence.
I rinse my sinuses with water from my RO system. My well produces barely-drinkable water, so it takes two membrane passes to knock the minerals back. Ain't nothing getting through that, by the time it's in the product tank it's around 5ppm TDS and I have to run it through calcite to add enough solute back to drink it.
If you're really concerned a cheap single pass RO would be more than adequate for town water but make sure you have a carbon prefilter, chlorine eats up the membranes.
well I put two packets of salt in about a glass of water which is about %1.5 salinity level. studies have shown that above this level the mf is basically non viable:
"Salinity exhibited a significant effect on the growth of N. fowleri in both dH2O and environmental water. In general, increasing salinity concentrations decreased growth but significance differences stopped once salinity reached 1.5% NaCl. This likely occurred because growth and replication of N. fowleri were minimal past this salinity level, with the amoeba encysting at salinity concentrations above 1.5% and ultimately losing viability"
between high salinity, chlorine in the water and my super mucus filled nostrils, I hope I am fine.
I don't think the risks are really significant:
Such infections are rare. Acanthamoeba affects only three to 12 people each year in the United States. But about 82 percent of the infections are fatal. About three N. fowleri infections happen in the United States each year (SN: 9/18/20).
Like it's a thing that can happen but... barely worth worrying about.
What hell hole country shit is this? Holy fuck. Is the municipal water really that bad in your part of the world?
"Your part of the world" is most of the world.
In the country I grew up in, drinking directly from the tap is playing russian roulette.
You either filter the water, or boil it first before consuming it.
When I moved to a country in which tap water was drinkable, it blew my mind. Of course, it's totally normal to me nowadays.
The shit we have to do to make it drinkable will probably also blow your mind.
Water is essential to all life on this planet. Imagine drinking water that no other organisms can live in.
Where I live has some of the best water in the world and I was still given this speech when I bought a neti pot
I couldn't even imagine this. I consume tap water daily. And to be honest also never heard such storys before this.
Okay. Thank you. I read up about it after all this. That was/is a total foreign concept to me and it would never have occurred to me. And to be honest I find it disgusting.
May I ask how old you are? I'm not dissing you or anything. I'm just trying to learn when I'm talking to a young person, vs an old one, based on what they write.
Having said that, it's funny when people say things like that when we all have a hole that spews shit every day.
Yeah sinus rinse requires already boiled water, even straight from the glacier, I think it's super sensitive to infection
If you seriously think wherever you live has water pure enough to do sinus rinses straight from the tap, id ask if you’re certain enough to bet your life on it- then I’d suggest you reconsider having such an abrasive stance on the subject.
You don't have to use a neti pot or anything (and if you did you'd hopefully know to use distilled water), but do you NEVER get water up your nose in the shower? Bath? Do you want brain eating bacteria on your supposedly washed hands? On the counter you just wiped down? Running through your dishwasher? Coming out your hose and your sprinklers? The ice cubes in your fridge? Are you willing to bet your BRAIN on never having an accident? But I'm sure it's all fine, as long as I keep it out of my nose. Wtf is wrong with some people... We just had a pandemic but basic hygiene is replaced with ignorance.