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Brain-eating amoeba
#50613 12/07/18 09:17 AM
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ryck Offline OP
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These days, with various devices advertised to flush nasal passages, this gives one pause to wonder.

Last edited by ryck; 12/07/18 09:20 AM.

ryck

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Re: Brain-eating amoeba
ryck #50615 12/07/18 04:17 PM
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Notice the woman did not follow the Neti Pot instructions to use boiled or saline water. This serves as an object lesson in the impossibility of providing absolute protection from user stupidity. You would think this kind of thing would serve to improve the gene pool, but there must be some corollary of Murphy's Law working against that.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
joemikeb #50616 12/07/18 04:34 PM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Notice the woman did not follow the Neti Pot instructions to use boiled or saline water. This serves as an object lesson in the impossibility of providing absolute protection from user stupidity.

I'm reminded of the grounding instructions for my stereo: "The best ground is a metal stake driven into moist earth."

Yeah, fat chance! tongue

But it does cover all bases, and perhaps even gets its point across in the process.

And more specific, i.e. cigarette-like, instructions in this particular instance could have saved the woman's life.

Originally Posted By: joemikeb
You would think this kind of thing would serve to improve the gene pool, but there must be some corollary of Murphy's Law working against that.

Didn't it? There's now one less misfit in and contributing to the gene pool.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
artie505 #50622 12/07/18 08:38 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
I'm reminded of the grounding instructions for my stereo: "The best ground is a metal stake driven into moist earth."

Yeah, fat chance! tongue

While I can't vouch for how moist the ground is my stereo has exactly that kind of protection. Standard building codes around the country require a metal (often copper) stake driven into the ground any where from three to five feet and connected usually through the breaker panel to the ground socket in every standard 120 Volt 3 wire socket in your residence which in turn connects through the power plug to your stereo. Around here you cannot get a "certificate of Occupancy" necessary to turn on any utilities including water and power without such an arrangement.

Unless you are living in a house built prior in the last 60 0r 70 years or is deep Appalachia or off the grid in Alaska, I venture your stereo is similarly grounded to a metal stack driven into moist(?) earth.

Originally Posted By: artie505
There's now one less misfit in and contributing to the gene pool.

But the infection may have spread. Can you guarantee she did not already reproduce, perhaps multiple times. Or maybe she was a school teacher and spread her disregard of instruction to possibly hundreds of impressionable students. The Darwin Awards seem to indicate there are always plenty more where that one came from and her failure to follow instructions would not even qualify for an also ran in that competition.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
joemikeb #50631 12/09/18 10:26 AM
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I had visions of people with watering cans moistening the ground into which their stakes are driven. tongue

The 80 year old building in which I live is nowhere near up to current code (I imagine that the same can be said for much of NYC.), and I've got no idea how or if even my apparently grounded outlets are grounded. (Three were installed after the fact and may be kosher, and I've never even bothered to count the wires in the one of my original eight. In fact, the super doesn't even bother with an adaptor when he installs a new refrigerator...merely clips the grounding prong.)

Heck, I've still got glass fuses! shocked

I ran across another article about the incident which said that the lady in question was 69, so this particular idiocy probably ended with her. (I didn't see anything about contagion, but if she got it from tap water, an entire community may be at some degree of risk.) In today's litigious climate, the manufacturer of her neti pot should have emphatically specified boiled water or saline rather than merely having "suggested it" as per the article.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
joemikeb #50634 12/09/18 04:38 PM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Notice the woman did not follow the Neti Pot instructions to use boiled or saline water. ...

Even Dr Oz, the media's medico-guru, cautions about using tap water with the neti pot.
Most municipal water systems allow for a certain level of heavy-metal, bacterial, amoebic and similar 'contamination', which can be amplified somewhat further down the line (literally) due to local contamination of feeder lines due to corrosion and such.
Many localities are only now just getting around to remediating problems due to lead pipes.
And so on, and so on ... ad nauseam.
Think of it as the government's eugenics program, weeding out the mentally and physically infirm.

Aside #1: Another reason to 'purify' water from mountain streams, given the prevalence of giardia in such water supplies.

Aside #2: Similar holds true for humidifiers. If you don't use deionized/demineralized water, particulate calcium will dust all over your furniture ... and infiltrate your lungs, wreaking a fair bit of havoc.

Re: Brain-eating amoeba
grelber #50635 12/09/18 05:04 PM
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I've placed small open containers of NYC tap and Poland Spring water in my frost-free freezer and allowed them to evaporate, and I've found lots of ugly brown residue in the former, but none in the latter.

People in my neighborhood seem to have abandoned tap water in favor of Poland Spring, but that deprives their kids of the fluorine.

Personally, I'd risk the contaminants, which don't appear to be anywhere near critical, rather than confer lifelong dental problems on my kids.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
artie505 #50637 12/09/18 11:06 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
(Three were installed after the fact and may be kosher, and I've never even bothered to count the wires in the one of my original eight. In fact, the super doesn't even bother with an adaptor when he installs a new refrigerator...merely clips the grounding prong.)

Okay your stereo probably isn't properly grounded to a "metal stake driven into moist earth". 😖

Originally Posted By: artie505
People in my neighborhood seem to have abandoned tap water in favor of Poland Spring, but that deprives their kids of the fluorine.

Personally, I'd risk the contaminants, which don't appear to be anywhere near critical, rather than confer lifelong dental problems on my kids.

I remember several years ago Consumer Reports ran a series if articles on water. They used New York City tap water as the gold standard for taste, odor, and purity against which they compared water from cities all over the continent and major brands of bottled "spring" water, filtered water, and distilled water. Their conclusion was everyone should drive New Your City water. What has happened in the interim?


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
joemikeb #50640 12/10/18 11:03 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
(Three were installed after the fact and may be kosher, and I've never even bothered to count the wires in the one of my original eight. In fact, the super doesn't even bother with an adaptor when he installs a new refrigerator...merely clips the grounding prong.)

Okay your stereo probably isn't properly grounded to a "metal stake driven into moist earth". 😖

To give you an idea of how scarce outlet space is around here, to get my stereo (which is turned on 24/7/365) on to a (presumably) grounded line I'd have to move it to one that's already got my air conditioner, space heater, and dehumidifier, 2 of which are frequently running at the same time, on it.

The definitely ungrounded line it's on at the moment has also got my refrigerator and a few 100 watt bulbs (which are on only intermittently).

Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
People in my neighborhood seem to have abandoned tap water in favor of Poland Spring, but that deprives their kids of the fluorine.

Personally, I'd risk the contaminants, which don't appear to be anywhere near critical, rather than confer lifelong dental problems on my kids.

I remember several years ago Consumer Reports ran a series if articles on water. They used New York City tap water as the gold standard for taste, odor, and purity against which they compared water from cities all over the continent and major brands of bottled "spring" water, filtered water, and distilled water. Their conclusion was everyone should drive New Your City water. What has happened in the interim?

The only thing of which I"m aware is Is NYC Tap Water Safe? 6 Cancer-Causing Chemicals Found At 'Unsafe' Levels, which doesn't affect taste in the least, but which has apparently spooked people.

It reminds me of the Red #2 hysteria of 1976 which actually induced Mars to stop making red M&Ms even though they didn't contain the dye in question.

My point being: how many pounds of a substance that humans consume in minuscule quantities must a rat eat in a day before it contracts cancer?

Yup... Figures lie, and liars figure!

I stopped drinking tap water in favor of Poland Spring - the stuff in the expensive clear plastic bottles - a few years ago because of the residue I've already mentioned in combination with distinctly unpleasant odors I encountered: sometimes it smelled heavily chlorinated like an indoor swimming pool...sometimes like I'd just opened a bottle of plain old bleach.

This is a recent analysis of Poland Spring water.

(I just ran across Bottled Water Exposed (Not Good) which states that fluorine "can actually do more harm than good, like causing fluorosis — permanent deformation of the teeth", and that many bottled waters contain at least some.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
artie505 #50641 12/10/18 02:15 PM
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ryck Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: artie505
To give you an idea of how scarce outlet space is around here, to get my stereo (which is turned on 24/7/365) on to a (presumably) grounded line I'd have to move it to one that's already got my air conditioner, space heater, and dehumidifier, 2 of which are frequently running at the same time, on it.

Or, if your stereo has a grounding post, such as your turntable would have (if you're like me and still playing vinyl), you could run a wire from that post to a plumbing pipe.


ryck

"What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits" The Doobie Brothers

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Re: Brain-eating amoeba
ryck #50652 12/11/18 11:03 AM
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Originally Posted By: ryck
Or, if your stereo has a grounding post, such as your turntable would have (if you're like me and still playing vinyl), you could run a wire from that post to a plumbing pipe.

Thanks for the suggestion. Of course it does! I just ignored it at the outset and have long since forgotten about it. tongue

Having lived for so many years in a world in which nothing was ever grounded and nothing ever came of it (except, perhaps, an inaudible hummm), I tend to be lax, to say the least, about grounding. In fact, I've lived dangerously with electricity my entire life. shocked (Yup, many times!)

But since we've been on the subject, I've taken the path of least resistance and moved the stereo's plug to the grounded line. (The additional power draw is negligible.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
artie505 #50655 12/11/18 05:30 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
(I just ran across Bottled Water Exposed (Not Good) which states that fluorine "can actually do more harm than good, like causing fluorosis — permanent deformation of the teeth", and that many bottled waters contain at least some.)

In large areas of West Texas the water naturally has very high levels of fluoride and I know many people who live or grew up in that area. The only ill effects they report are...
  • A noticeable brownish cast to their teeth
  • They never get to visit a dentist for other than routine tooth cleaning
  • The nearest dentist may be a 200 or more miles away because they cannot make a living in the area
  • People who move to the area seem to become equally immune to tooth decay after living in the area for four or five years or more
  • if anything the average IQ of those growing up in the area may be above the national average based on college graduation rates
  • I know several who at one time or another started drinking bottled water (mostly for cosmetic reasons), but went back to the local water after they began suffering cavities and other dental problems
All of which leads me to question whose axe the author of your referenced article was grinding?


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Brain-eating amoeba
joemikeb #50664 12/12/18 11:43 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
  • People who move to the area seem to become equally immune to tooth decay after living in the area for four or five years or more
  • I know several [people] who at one time or another started drinking bottled water (mostly for cosmetic reasons), but went back to the local water after they began suffering cavities and other dental problems
All of which leads me to question whose axe the author of your referenced article was grinding?

That's interesting; I had somehow picked up the idea that fluorine was necessary during only the formative years.

Under any circumstances, though, it's waaay too late for my teeth.

My bad for not doing more/better research! I don't remember exactly what I asked Google, but I sure followed the wrong link. (Collective Evolution is its parent site.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire

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