Lake Jackson, Texas residents were asked not to use tap water after a brain-eating microbe was found in the water supply, which authorities thoroughly disinfected, the BBC reported. A six-year-old boy reportedly contracted the microbe and died earlier this month. The boy, Josiah McIntryre, was reportedly infected with water from that area. Residents were strictly asked not to use tap water, except to flush the toilet.
Naegleria fowleri, the microscopic amoeba, can cause a deadly infection in the brain.
The amoeba enters the body through the nose and from there travels to the brain. Josiah’s mother, Maria Castillo, said her son died at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston on Sept. 8 and was told by doctors that the cause was the brain-eating amoeba, NBC News reported.
The affected areas include Lake Jackson, Freeport, Angleton, Brazoria, Richwood, Oyster Creek, Clute, and Rosenberg. However, the warning was later removed from the other locations except Lake Jackson.
Contamination of public water systems treated in the US by the microbe is rare but not unheard of. According to the CDC website, the first deaths from naegleria fowleri found in tap water from public drinking water systems in the US occurred in southern Louisiana in 2011 and 2013. The microbe was also found in 2003 in an untreated geothermal drinking water system in Arizona, as well as in disinfected public drinking water supplies in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s and in 2008 in Pakistan.
(With contributions from the agency)
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