You can read more about Dr. Tolan’s impressive credentials below.

To summarize, Dr. Tolan is the real deal, and is perhaps the best-qualified person to answer my question:

Will nasal saline rinses result in death from brain-eating amoeba??

The main points from that conversation are these:

• Using a Neti pot or other methods of doing nasal saline rinses won’t cause your death by brain-eating amoeba.
• Just to be safe, for nasal saline rinses, simply use boiled tap water, or simply buy a jug of distilled water.

There you have it. For the rest of what Dr. Tolan had to say, read on …

Image: Brain-eating amoeba, N. fowleri (image credit: CDC). The central B&W image is a "phase-contrast" from under the microscope; the pics on either side are stained brain tissue showing infection with amoeba ("Amoebic Meningoencephalitis")

As a world-renowned expert on infectious diseases of the central nervous system, I called Dr. Tolan to ask his opinion about the recent cases in the media, specifically cases of “brain-eating Amoeba” – Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (AM), linked to use of a Neti pot.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this because I have colleagues, patients and their families (and readers of this blog), asking me whether it’s safe to be doing nasal saline rinses at all. Are we risking Amoebic Meningitis by doing nasal saline rinses??

There are two reports that I am familiar with, and both have received a lot of attention on the web, in social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Here is what Dr. Tolan had to say:

Boogordoctor: Dr. Tolan, thank you so much for taking time to offer your expert opinion about Amoebic Meningoencephalitis, from Neti pot use.

Dr. Tolan: My pleasure, Dr. Faust, glad to help.

Boogordoctor: Are you familiar with the recent cases of AM linked to Neti pot use?

Dr. Tolan: I am not, since they have not yet been confirmed by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). I have not seen them reported in the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report). Don’t believe everything that you read on the internet. Many things are sensationalized to boost readership.

On the other hand, there are some important points to make using these examples.

Boogordoctor: Such as?

Dr. Tolan:

• The first point for your readers to keep in mind is that AM is incredibly rare. There are usually about 3 cases per year in this country annually.
• Most of those cases occur after swimming in ponds in warm environments – Southern states.
• The next point to keep in mind is that the organism responsible for those cases is usually Naegleria fowleri. It is important to point out that N. fowleri is EVERYWHERE in our environment, including our municipal water supply. It is ubiquitous.
• N. fowleri is difficult to kill, especially in environments where it is happiest – in the South, for example. There is simply no way to chlorinate our water supply in the South to levels that will eliminate all N. fowleri. The farther South you go, the warmer the water, the greater the risk of having N. fowleri in your tap water (and ponds, lakes, etc.).
• My recommendation is, for people using Neti pots or other methods of nasal saline irrigations, USE DISTILLED WATER, or BOILED tap water. Distilled water is not absolutely sterile, but will have much lower risk of containing amoeba species than tap water.

Regarding these cases of AM related to Neti pot use that are reported online, I will be interested to see what the CDC investigators tell us. Regardless, it is important to emphasize how rare these cases are in this country.

Boogordoctor: Dr. Tolan, that is great advice, and supports what I have been telling people: use distilled water for your Neti pot or squeeze-bottle for nasal saline rinses – whether you use a store-bought salt preparation or make your own from a recipe.

Again, thanks so much for lending your expertise.

Dr. Tolan: You are very welcome, call any time.

My take on this: if you are doing nasal saline rinses, you have little to fear from Amoeba, as long as you are using distilled water or boiled tap water. You have a much (much) higher risk of exposure to N. fowleri by swimming in lakes or ponds in Southern states.

Conclusions

• It’s not about the Neti pot, or even about nasal rinses.
• It’s about the water.
• Just be sure your water is safe. How?
• Use distilled or boiled water for your nasal rinses!

The Life-Cycle of N. fowleri

The image below shows how N. fowleri (and some other amoeba species) get into our brains: simply swimming in ponds or lakes with high concentrations of amoeba (think warm, Southern states), can result in amoeba reaching our noses; they crawl through our “olfactory neuroepithelium” – that part of our noses that give us the sense of smell), and enter our brains that way. Bad news!

Image: Life-cycles of amoeba

Please leave a comment / reply and let us know how you are doing nasal saline rinses.

And thanks for visiting!

____________________________

About Dr. Robert Tolan

Dr. Tolan is a world-renowned expert on infections of the central nervous system.

He is currently Chief, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, The Children’s Hospital at Saint Peter’s University Hospital, New Brunswick, New Jersey and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He earned a Master’s Degree in Microbiology before earning his Medical Degree at Washington University School of Medicine. Following his training in Pediatrics, he pursued advanced training and research in Infectious Diseases at Washington University/St. Louis Children’s Hospital. He is board certified in Pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics, and also the Sub-Board of Infectious Diseases. He teaches at Drexel University, where he is Associate Clinical Professor.

Dr. Tolan’s research is funded by the NIH; he studies various infections in children and infants, and his list of publications is longer than I am tall.

_______________________________________

Resources:

http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/index.cfm/newsroom/detail/2332

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/239422.php – be sure to read the comments: this isn’t about Neti pots! It’s about the WATER.

http://health.yahoo.net/articles/flu/neti-pot-deaths-linked-brain-eating-amoeba-tap-water

http://phoenix.about.com/od/health/qt/Ameba.htm

http://www.wwltv.com/news/health/Doctors-explain-cause-of-brain-eating-amoeba-128043523.html

Image Credit:  All images from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Image Library, in the Public Domain.

_______________________________________

Hi, I’m Russell Faust, author of this medical education blog.

Let me know what topics are important to you and your child’s respiratory health.

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Stay informed.

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Until next time, remember … you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose (unless you’re a boogor doctor ;~D)

You can read my more lengthy rants about toxins in our environment elsewhere on this blog. This rant will focus just on the insanity of bottled water – the actual cost of putting water into plastic bottles and distributing those bottles for our consumption – and the cost to our environment of all those plastic bottles.

In the United States alone,

we spend upwards of $20 billion per year on bottled water.

That’s correct – $20 Billion, with a B.

We somehow bought into the marketing image that bottled water is hip, clean, refreshing. The image that tap water is somehow un-cool, unclean, and unhealthy. Of course, that is the image that bottling companies have paid their ad agencies to promote.

Malignant Indulgence

We have been sold the idea that bottled water is a convenience (it is), and that we are worth the indulgence (of course we are!). Despite the marketing image to the contrary, bottled water is not a benign indulgence. Every liter of bottled water uses up 3 liters of water: the liter in the bottle, and the 2 additional liters (!!) of water that are required to produce the bottle and get the water into the bottle. Check out this video for The Story of Bottled Water in 2010.

For all the bottled water that we consume every year in the US alone, enough oil is used making the bottles to fuel one Million cars for a year. This does not even address the oil consumed to transport that water around the planet to get it to us. Malignant indulgence.

According to an article in Fast Company by Charles Fishman, over 1 Billion bottles of water are moved around every week in ships, trains, and trucks – in the United States alone. According to Fishman, “That’s a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water.” And water is so heavy that those trucks can’t even be filled to capacity because the loads would be too heavy – they travel partially empty. This simple physical fact – the weight of water, and the energy required to transport it – is responsible for the majority of environmental cost associated with bottled water. Malignant indulgence.

Fishman reminds us that one out of six people in the world does not have dependable, safe drinking water. At many of the sources of our bottled water, most of the local people do not have safe, reliable drinking water.

Let that sink in for a moment …

For example, in Fiji, the source of arguably the hippest bottled water around, the water-bottling factory produces more than 1 Million bottles per day.

“Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.” Fishman

Malignant indulgence.

It’s bad enough that we spend so much energy transporting water around the planet for our convenience. Perhaps the negative impact would not be quite so great if we would only recycle all those bottles. But we don’t. We’re about convenience, and recycling requires some thought, some effort. It can be inconvenient. We recycle less than 1/4th of all those water bottles. We simply can’t be bothered to recycle.

As a result, we pour nearly 40 Billion water bottles per year into landfills. That’s equal to more than $1 Billion worth of plastic. Malignant indulgence.

The term “malignant indulgence” really begins to sink in when we consider that the act of bottling water – storing water in plastic bottles – has introduced an ubiquitous source of toxins in our lives. The most studied of these is bis-phenol-A (BPA), but there are many others. BPA is a known hormone-disrupter. In addition to being linked to a variety of chronic diseases, including immune dysfunction, asthma, sinusitis, BPA has been clearly linked to a variety of cancers in both men and women. Malignant indulgence.

So, What to DO With This Knowledge?

First, stop drinking bottled water.

Be Informed, Be Inspired

Watch the video on The Story of Bottled Water. I promise that you will be inspired.

Take a look at the article in Fast Company: Message in a Bottle, by Charles Fishman – worth a read, even though it’s a couple years old now. Believe me, the numbers are worse now than they were when he wrote it.

Take a look at the article, Pink Washing the Dangers of Bottled Water in The Huffington Post, by Lisa Kaas Boyle – great article.

Take a look at this tongue-on-cheek infographic: http://imgur.com/llniM

From This Blog

Stop Drinking Bottled Water: http://wp.me/pR4iB-rn

Better Living Through LESS Chemistry: Our Food & Water: http://wp.me/pR4iB-d6

Benign Indulgence: Go Stainless

Get yourself some easy-to-use, re-usable stainless bottles that you can use for many years to come. A couple that I endorse are listed on the boogordoctor’s Amazon Store. Yes, I am an affiliate, but don’t let that deter you from going to stainless – if a couple percent of your purchase going toward supporting expenses of this blog bothers you, purchase your bottle someplace else. But DO go stainless.

In our family we use stainless bottles from several makers, but the one that is the clear favorite is from Contigo. The Contigo bottle has a wide mouth for easy cleaning, is insulated so it keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold, and can be operated with one hand. That is, it has a secure closure mechanism so that it does not spill (ever!), that opens with the squeeze of the fingers of your hand that is holding the bottle. Comfortable, convenient, easy.

Stainless – The New Hip. Benign Indulgence!

________________________________________

Thanks for visiting.

Please, leave a comment on how you have managed to stop drinking bottle water.

What is your favorite stainless bottle?

What stainless bottle do you use for your children?

I appreciate your comments and questions.  Keep ‘em coming.  Please, “be excellent to one another.”

I invite you to subscribe (it’s FREE) to this blog for weekly updates – you won’t be swamped by updates, I simply cannot write for the blog everyday.

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Type in your best email address (the one you actually use).

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When the confirmation email from boogor doctor arrives, click on the link to give your okay to receive free weekly updates, occasional book reviews or product reviews, occasional discount-coupons for products that I use (not affiliates), all without needing to visit the website.

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Stay Informed.

Stay Healthy.

Best of health and success to you and your families.

Until next time, remember … you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose (unless you’re a boogor doctor :~D)

Stop Drinking Bottled Water!

.

Bottled water is bad for YOU, horrible for our ENVIRONMENT!!

Don’t drink bottled water.

What to do?

Use one of those oh-so-cool stainless bottles. Fill it with tap water. Filter tap water if you must (we do). Check out the boogor doctor’s Amazon Store for the stainless bottle that I use (we have 4 or 5 of these Contigo stainless bottles in our family. They’re awesome!! One-hand operation, no cap to un-screw, just push-button operation): http://astore.amazon.com/asktheboogodo-20?node=1&page=3

For transparency, I am an Amazon affiliate.

Check out article from this blog: Better Living Through LESS Chemistry: Our Food & Water: http://wp.me/pR4iB-d6

Credit: Infographic Via Term Life Insurance

Credit: This was posted on the Huffington Post by Brian Clark Howard:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-clark-howard/stop-drinking-bottled-wat_b_660499.html

_________________________________________________________________

Questions:

What stainless water bottle do YOU use?

Which water filter?

Let us know in REPLY below. We all appreciate it!

I appreciate your comments and questions.  Keep ‘em coming.  Please, “be excellent to one another.”

I invite you to subscribe (it’s FREE) to this blog for weekly updates – you won’t be swamped by updates, I simply cannot write for the blog everyday.

Click here to subscribe for free weekly updates: (http://eepurl.com/FGnP)

Type in your best email address (the one you actually use).  When the confirmation email from boogor doctor arrives, click on the link to give your okay to receive free weekly updates, occasional book or product reviews, without needing to visit the website.

It’s free, it’s convenient. No ads. No spam. You can un-subscribe at any time.

Stay Informed.

Stay Healthy.

Best of health and success to you and your families.

Until next time, remember … you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose (unless you’re a boogor doctor :~D)

It’s Embarrassing

Americans spend more money on bottled water than iPods or movie tickets!

Not that those are expenditures to be proud of.

It’s a WASTE

Americans churn through 2.5 Million plastic bottles EVERY HOUR of every day.  It is estimated that the amount of oil used to produce those bottles could fuel 1 Million cars for a year.  Doesn’t even include all those bottles from ‘soft drinks’.  What a waste.

For every liter of water that is put into a bottle, 3 liters are used: 1 in the botte, and 2 additional liters of water that are used to make the plastic bottle.  Then there is the amount of oil used to transport that water to where you and I can buy it.

What a waste.

And all for water that MOST bottling companies simply take from the tap, filter it, and bottle it.

It’s Deceptive

That’s right.  Those beautiful images of mountain glacier-fed streams on the bottle, and the natural-sounding names on the bottle – those have nothing to do with where the water came from.

That’s just marketing.

Nearly HALF of bottled water is simply filtered tap water!

Do it yourself and save the 2000 percent mark-up!

Wouldn’t it be more honest to show a beach covered with oil-soaked pelicans and plastic bottles washed up?

If that was the image that we connected with bottled water, how many of us would still be drinking bottled water?  It’s time that we all start making that connection, and stop drinking bottled water.

It’s Making a MESS of Our Environment

Most of these bottles are not even recycled.  We throw away 3.8 Billion water bottles every year.  Most of those end up in landfills.  Or on beaches all over the planet. That is an estimated $1 Billion of plastic.

What a waste.

In Our Food and Water

It’s Toxic

In addition to devastating our environment, those plastic bottles, and other plastics, contain volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).

Plastic Plastic Plastic

Bad for our environment.  Bad for us.  VOC’s and other toxins (PVC’s) in plastics contribute to allergies, asthma, various cancers, and birth defects.

Polyvinvyl chloride (PVC) is used for water bottles, and bottles for other things:

• salad dressing
• detergent
• cooking oil
• shampoo
• mouth wash, and other plastics like
• plastic wrap on meats
• baby’ teething rings
• baby pacifiers
• baby-bottle nipples, and
• toys

.

The toxins that are in these plastics come out into our food and water, including:

Toxic Bis-pheno-A Derivative

• lead
• cadmium
• mercury
• phthalates
• diethyl hexphosphate

ALL of these are either neuro-toxins, or carcinogens, or BOTH.

I know – this is depressing, discouraging.

But you CAN make a difference. Here’s How:

.

What To Do About It?

• Well to start with, stop drinking water from plastic bottles
• Use tap water
• Filter if you must (we do).  There are several great water filter systems, some pretty inexpensive, that will filter out most VOC’s and other toxins (check the boogor doctor’s Amazon Store on the right for filter systems)
• Don’t store your water in a plastic pitcher
• Use ceramic or glass
• And carry your water in an oh-so-cool stainless bottle.  There are many to choose from (check out the boogor doctor’s Amazon Store)
• Try to store food in glass or stainless containers
• And while we’re on the subject, for all the other liquid food items that come in plastic bottles, try to find them in glass bottles.  No BPA, VOC’s from those.

Check out stainless LunchBots for storing your kids’ lunches, instead of plastic. Yes, they’re pricey, but they last forever!

For carrying our water around, we like Klean Kanteen. (These links are for our Amazon Store; I am an affiliate). See link to “How to Pick a Safe Water Bottle” in Resources, below.

What do YOU use?

So what to do with all those plastic containers in your cupboards?

Do what we do with ours:

• Store crayons and art supplies in them
• Use them to mix paints
• Store screws and nails and other small hardware
• Parts in the garage, etc.
• Put them in recycle if you must discard them

Don’t simply dump them in the landfill.

You can still use them, just don’t store water or food in them.  The goal here is to minimize the amount of time that your food or water spends in plastics, not necessarily eliminate these containers entirely from your life (although that would be OK, too).

We filter our water.  Most of the best stand-alone filtration systems filter the water into a plastic pitcher.  We simply transfer into a ceramic or glass pitcher once filtered.  See my Amazon Store for some nice options.

Next Week:

We’ll focus on reducing the toxins in our food.

It’s easier than you think.

Thanks for visiting, and see you here again next week when we review other ways to minimize poisons in our food.  It’s easier than you think.

I appreciate your comments and questions.  Keep ‘em coming.  Please, “be excellent to one another.”

If you are interested in these topics, please click here to subscribe to this blog (it’s FREE).  Be sure to type in your best email address (the one that you actually use).  You will then receive an email with a “confirmation link” – click on that link to get weekly updates from this blog in your email.

It’s free, it’s convenient, it’s an easy way to stay up-t0-date on information to keep you and your family healthy.

Stay Informed. Stay Healthy.

Best of health and success to you and your families.

Until next time, remember … you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose (unless you’re a boogor doctor :~D)

.

Resources:

Credit image of bottles on shore: http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4290848934/

This is the 2nd of 4 in the series on this blog. The 1st: http://wp.me/pR4iB-cr

Stainless lunchboxes for your kids: http://www.lunchbots.com

Stainless water bottles: http://www.kleankanteen.com

Poisons in our plastics: http://bit.ly/99ikic Polyethylene terephthalate, high-density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, low-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and others. Great resource.

Wasteful, inefficient:

We churn through 2.5 Million plastic bottles every hour. http://bit.ly/9pBizz

http://bit.ly/axxVJY “Bluewashing” bottled water issue: requires 2 liters of water to produce that 1liter bottle!

Americans spend more $ on bottled water than iPods or movie tickets! http://bit.ly/1gE3fe

Deceptive water marketing:
“Pink Washing the Dangers of Bottled Water” – deceptive marketing. http://bit.ly/92GvM2 by Lisa Kaas Boyle, Plastic Pollution Coalition

http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/2010/01/pink-washing-the-dangers-of-bottled-water/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-kaas-boyle/pink-washing-the-dangers_b_426077.html

How to pick a safe water bottle:

http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2008/03/17/choosing-a-safe-reusable-water-bottle/

Dangers of bottled water:

Toxins in plastics contribute to allergies, asthma, many studies including this one, 2004: http://bit.ly/cJogf7.

BPA may raise risk of asthma in children: http://bit.ly/9J52OH http://bit.ly/cFbRan

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:http://www.ecosalon.com/17-surprising-sources-of-bpa-and-how-to-avoid-them/

http://www.naturalwellbeing.com/blog/2009/07/dangers-of-bottled-water.cfm

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_backlash_against_bottled_water

Scientific American article: Europe bans many chemicals manufactured in the U.S. http://bit.ly/9YwXSp

Environmental impact (Warning – disturbing images):

http://tinyurl.com/ygnzh67

http://bit.ly/czPsQH

http://bit.ly/bhdXdP

http://www.squidoo.com/pacific-garbage-patch