A brain-eating amoeba in the water supply of a New Orleans area parish has sent scared residents into a bottled-water buying frenzy, according to CBS News.
Louisiana state health officials last week confirmed the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri, a parasite that leads to a deadly brain infection if it enters a person's nose, was found in the St. Bernand Parish water supply by government testers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals had conducted the testing following the death of a four-year-old Mississippi child who had reportedly contracted the amoeba playing on a slip'n'slide that had been laying in mud for hours.
Last Friday, state health officials urged residents to take precautions by chlorinating their pools and making sure water doesn't get up their noses. The state has also been chlorinating the affected water supply to rid it of the amoeba. Naegleria fowlerican thrive in warm, fresh waters like lakes, rivers and canals in the Southern portions of the United States.
"We are taking showers, but everything from the neck up we are using bottled water," Jamie Doerr, a long-time resident of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, La., said to CBS affiliate WWL in New Orleans on Thursday.
Brian Gab, owner of the B & G Fresh Market in Chalmette, told the Associated Press last week he had to order several times more water than he typically does. "I would say it's probably triple," he said yesterday. Many residents have expressed fears at drinking the water, prompting the health department on Thursday to release a "myth vs. fact" page to dispel rumors related to the water supply.
