Ratlung. Worse than we thought.

[Kenney]

I’ve seen semi slug moving along Papayas and Mulberries. Ever try to peel a Mullberry?

[kalakoa]

That's an avoidance strategy.

In the absence of substantive research, "avoidance" is all we have.

[Midnight Rambler]

eigoya: the thing about RLW is that the worms don't multiply inside you, so the severity depends on how many you ingest in the first place. They shed some in the slime, but not many. The worms are also relatively large (not really big enough to see, but much bigger than say bacteria; about half a millimeter long), so on a smooth surface like a fruit skin or your hands they should wash off. If one slips through on a fruit, or gets through your water filter, it probably won't be a big deal. The thing is that the Parmarion semislugs can carry thousands in a small body, and they can hide in leafy vegetables surprisingly easily.

I really wish they'd test the kind of water systems people have to figure out what the real threat is from catchment water. I have a 5 micron filter plus a high-intensity UV system. That should be enough to get rid of the worms, based on their size (they're about 25 microns wide; the filters are actually rated to catch only 90% of 5 micron debris, but 99.5% of 10 micron particles) and the vulnerability of other nematodes to UV radiation. But nobody has actually tested whether they're able to get through these filters in practice, and alternatively, what level of UV will kill them. Seems like a simple experiment to do with a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment and a couple of weeks of time. But no one is doing it now.

[Eric1600]

http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2017/0...ch-wanted/

FYI Dr. Jarvi is Hawaii's leading expert on Rat Lung.

Dr. JARVI: Education is no doubt very, very, important. But this problem is bigger than that… “Safe eating is healthy eating, and wash your veggies”. Very, very good advice. But washing your veggies with water does not make them safe, it makes them safer. These larvae, these rat lungworm organisms, live in water. We’ve had them in our lab, in the infectious stage, out to three weeks growing just in water. We now have a culture that when you give them a little food we’re out to four months we can keep these guys alive. So, just washing your vegetables in water – especially in an area where you have such high, widespread, unregulated catchment use, where a lot of people do not have fresh potable water to wash their vegetables in. So that’s a very big problem.


COUNCILWOMAN O’HARA: To me that’s not sufficient… where we’re passing out information that is not well researched, documented, firmly identifies ways to avoid transmission of this disease [referring to the Department of Health's Public Service announcements as being unverified information]. We’re not doing enough.

It suggests that people use as small as a 5 micron filter. Most of the filters that are commonly used are 10 or 20 microns. So it was suggested that the use of a 5 micron may protect you from a rat lungworm disease. But to me, that’s not sufficient.

JARVI: We need research on catchment systems – best design for catchment systems, to try to block the larvae from entering into household water supplies as well as agricultural water supplies. We know people can get infected by ingesting contaminated water. We’ve lost a baby – at least one child – that there’s no way this baby could have gotten rat lungworm other than in the bathtub. So, the water issue is a really big issue and we need to have research on that.


And to answer your costs for testing:

http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/11/alan-mc...diagnosis/

“We’ve seen very well-maintained catchment tanks and if you remove the cover, you’ll find dozens of slugs in there,” Jarvi says.

Many Puna residents drink catchment water that’s been run through filtration systems. Jarvi’s group has gotten a $35,000 Karassic Family Foundation grant to test those filters. They’ve found that the larvae pass easily through 20-micron filters, which many homes have. They’ve just begun testing 5-micron filters. Those, and 1-micron filters, should be fine enough to keep the parasites out — ”theoretically.”

“These larvae can bore, and we don’t know that the larvae can’t go around the filter,” Jarvi says. “We just don’t know.”

She thinks a larger study is needed to determine how catchment systems overall can be designed to better prevent rat lungworm. But that study would cost about $600,000.

Completing the “diagnostics expansion study”—which is developing the blood test that that diagnosed Kana Covington — would take another $150,000 to $200,000. To finish the vegetable wash study, Jarvi believes, would require another $60,000 or so. Another crucial study —a “bio-assay” to determine whether rat lungworm larvae are actually dead, and not simply paralyzed or dormant from a treatment — would require yet another $15,000.

[Kenney]

Wow. That’s some sobering information E1600. Mahalo.

And the Grant goes to, DOH for pamphlets...


Edited to correct spelling

[eigoya]

Thanks MidRamb. I wasn't saying they proliferate in the body, but, as stated in the baby bath water example above, did the baby absorb the "poison" via the water or directly swallow one in the water. Some of the victims on my link above state they were picking snails out of garden and soon rinsed hands in gasoline. So they absorbed the "poison/slime/something" through the skin. If you are barefoot in garden and squish one, two, three???
Recommending Rinsing vegetables (sealed in plastic from Costco) seems ridiculous

[rainyjim]

You can't 'absorb' parasites. They probably put fingers in their eyes/mouth/etc or drank some contaminated water.

[Eric1600]

what level of UV will kill them[?]

Just to add to this comment, UV doesn't kill anything. It typically sterilizes most small organisms via damage to their DNA because the UV passes through their cell walls. These now sterile organisms can no longer bloom once inside your body and your natural immune system finishes them off because they can't reproduce fast enough to overwhelm your body's response. However for a paracite, sterilization wouldn't matter. It gets in, grows and then it's busy doing damage to your nervous system.

Prolonged and strong UV exposure might damage them enough to kill them, but in general it's not guaranteed because it depends on a number of factors: water clarity, flow rate, exposure time and exposure levels. I don't think anyone has looked at how the larvae are affected by UV either.

If you look at the table in this pdf you'll get an idea of the variables: http://www.water-research.net/Waterlibra...iation.pdf

According to their work (http://pharmacy.uhh.hawaii.edu/rlw/faq.php) they recommend UVC exposure to the level rated to inactivate nematodes. One study of nametodes (round worm parasites) and UV indicated Ultraviolet lamp used in this study was a 11 W lamp and intensity of this lamp was 24 mW / cm^2 which took 9-12 minutes of exposure. So obviously this is much longer than a typical house UV system, but it is also probably less intensity. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3633802/)

So basically it's unknown about UV's effectiveness for inactivating/killing RLW using a typical catchment UV system.

[kalakoa]

So basically it's unknown about UV's effectiveness for inactivating/killing RLW using a typical catchment UV system.

Sounds like something that could be discovered with scientific research. Maybe there's a lab in San Diego or Portland that could be contracted to perform more "studies"?

[punaticbychoice]

kalakoa @ 9:21:12 1/15/2018-
Just send to Dr. Jarvik?
Oh I forgot, no funding for UH Hilo lab for research-
for those actually working on RLW.
Maybe a HDOH program to tell us to properly maintain our water systems.
What a dangerous joke Hawaii and Hawai'i government are.
What a bunch of nongs.