A 2-year-old boy died from a brain-eating amoeba infection this week, according to the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health and a Facebook post from the child’s mother.
Welp, if I had any desire to go to a hot spring, I sure don’t now.
Any fresh water body to be honest. There’s just a ton more small dangerous things that can live in fresh water vs salt water.
For Naegleria fowleri in particular, there have been enough infections from tap water, but as it prefers warm water, it’s more common in swimming pools and bathing lakes.
Well, f*@k, I was just in hot springs 2 days ago…
It’s pretty rare and only a potential problem if you put your head under the water. Here in New Zealand we have lots of hot springs and that’s the reason there’s signs saying don’t put your head under the water.
It is only a problem if it gets inside your olfactory nerve.
If it’s that dangerous the signs should really say, “Don’t enter. Risk of death.”
It’s not though, it’s just that not putting your head under is 100% effective at preventing the already very rare occurrence
I’ve read about them and it’s fascinating how it happens. Brain eating amoeba are super common, but it’s actually rare that they kill you because they don’t actually want to be in your brain, they just get lost and confused. There’s a thread that connects your nose to your brain looks like food to them so they follow it up there. And your body just has a hard time killing it for some reason. Then it reaches the brain where defenses are weak and just goes wild eating, at which point you are done for.
I think of them like little lost sharks. They don’t know what’s going on or where they are, but they will mess everything up just because that’s what they do.
