Tap Water Isn't Safe! Brain-Eating Amoeba Fatal In 99% Of Cases 'Could Come From Your Own Faucet'

Now even TAP WATER isn’t safe! Brain-eating amoeba fatal in 99% of cases ‘could come from your own faucet’

• In 2011, two people in Louisiana died after using tap water for nasal irrigation
• Amoeba known as Naegleria fowleri can infect brain and enters through nasal passage
• Once infected, organism is 99% fatal

By Beth Stebner

PUBLISHED:07:37 EST, 24 August 2012| UPDATED:07:37 EST, 24 August

There could be a deadly killer in your home – the kitchen tap.

Last year in Louisiana, two people died from a single-celled organism that thrives in warm, freshwater after using tap water for flushing their sinuses.

The amoeba, known as Naegleria fowleri, can cause primary amoebic meningoecephalitis (PAM), which is fatal in 99 per cent of cases.

Both victims, a 51-year-old woman and a 28-year-old man, had used tap water in neti pots to flush out their sinuses and died days later. They lived in separate areas of the state.

Neti pots are generally safe for use for clearing out excess mucus in the nasal cavity, but when amoebas are present, the infection has a frighteningly fatal rate. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the amoeba enters the brain through the nasal passage, especially when people go swimming in warm freshwater lakes and ponds.

In areport published by Dr Jonathan Yoder, who works at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, a division of the CDC, concluded that in both cases, the victims had only come in contact with the amoeba from tap water.

He and a group of researchers tested the water from both houses. Their results were published in Clinical Infectious Diseases on August 23.

Dr Yoder and the other authors found the amoeba in the kitchen spigot, shower, bathtub, and bathroom sink in the woman’s home.