Concerns about brain-eating amoebas in the news have caused people in Connecticut to wonder if they can find them here.
“At the moment, it’s highly unlikely that something like this will happen,” said Nicholas Stasli of the University of New Haven.
Stasulli says it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see a brain-eating amoeba in the Northeast.
“You don’t really get into that infection phase until the water temperature reaches about 77 degrees, so relatively warm water temperatures and not necessarily a lot, especially in large bodies of water,” Stasri said.
Brain-eating amoebas live in fresh water. If it gets in your nose while swimming, it can cause a brain infection.
The cases were mostly seen in the much warmer southern states, but the heat we’ve endured has caused something else.
Wilton’s Tom Breslin said, “We did an inspection of the pond last Thursday and it had a lot of E.coli, so we shut it down.”
Swimming is not possible at Merwyn Meadows Park due to an influx of waterfowl.
The pond was tested again Wednesday morning.
“With summer temperatures so high and precipitation so low, high evaporation often starts to concentrate water bodies,” Stasulli said.
Stasulli says chlorine can kill all kinds of bacteria, including the brain-eating amoeba.
According to the CDC, only about three people in the United States get infected with the brain-eating amoeba each year, but it’s deadly.
Experts say there is no cure for brain-eating amoebas and they are most commonly seen in children.