Posts: 601
Threads: 147
Joined: Jul 2007
Posts: 664
Threads: 67
Joined: Mar 2016
Now if we could only get some research money for testing, cures, and eradication, instead of the $1 million that went to the health department to put out fliers about not eating slugs.
Posts: 2,481
Threads: 10
Joined: Feb 2008
There is rightly a lot of moral outrage swirling around but I doubt that it contributes much. I don't know all the details about the appropriateness or not of giving available money to DOH vs UH. The arguments for UH seem plausible. I just get tired of completely untrained individuals claiming to know more than medical professionals. I watched a video a couple of years ago of a sort of town hall meeting in Pahoa I think where it was described how patients were repeatedly sent away from Hilo Medical Center with a diagnosis of flue only to find out later that they had RLW. In the same meeting the speaker asked for a show of hands of those who have had RLW and most of those attending raised their hands. So the doctors are ALL incompetent and those attending the meeting can do a better job of self diagnosis? I maintain a healthy skepticism.
I do agree that it is very important to quantify the risk and prioritize the various risk factors. I would wash and eat a tomato with out a second thought. A leaf of lettuce? I really wonder if I could wash enough lettuce for a whole family effectively. As for catchment water, I am not dismissing the risk but it seems the risk of eating a slug on a wrinkly leafy vegetable is at least an order of magnitude worse than any mere contact with water. Gypsy, I think you often do make crazy assertions but in this case I think you sort of casually contributed to a potential inaccuracy when you reported that Smiley's son Phoenix may have contracted RLW from their catchment. It's also not fair to single you out in this regard but anyway. In the video she says he caught it from siphoning. He may have picked up a length of hose from the ground. The moist, dark interior of the hose is a perfect hiding place for slugs. He could have sucked a slug in directly. Also if he just threw one end into the tank the end may have wound up resting in the muck at the bottom. Either way it wasn't so much the water that got him. It is proper to report that the worms are present in the slime and can survive in water for a while but as far as I know the severity of the symptoms correlates really strongly with the risk of having actually ingested a slug. A husband and wife sitting next to each other and egging each other on when recounting how they stepped on something in the garden that time or the other day when they picked up a bunch of slugs by hand is more likely to confuse the issue than clarify it.
I would really like answers as to how long the worms live in water. Do they swim? Do they sink? Given their size I would think that they would sink, that is unless they actually swim. Does chlorine really do nothing to them? Does UV kill them? What size filters can they get through? These questions really deserve answers. I'm an engineer and I troubleshoot problems as my job. I could not function in my job if I employed anecdotal evidence as so many youtube warriors do when they go on a crusade fueled by moral outrage. That's why I so often seem critical. Real answers are not gotten through signing petitions. Petitions have more to do with popularity contests than anything else.
I think that eating uncooked leafy vegetables poses by far the greatest risk. Washing and eating something smooth like a tomato, mango, or papaya poses a very low risk. Casual contact while working in the yard, almost no risk. I would say the same for bathing in catchment water. Drinking catchment water would of course have a higher risk but it already did before RLW. If you treat for those other things you get protection for RLW and if not well Lepto would have killed you anyway. In the recent case of the infant he almost certainly ingested a slug. It is still not acceptable that an infant can get infected but it is important to focus on what measures would have prevented it.
Posts: 14,054
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
I would really like answers as to ... Does chlorine really do nothing to them? Does UV kill them? What size filters can they get through?
Exactly. That's why the State allocated money to DoH to print flyers and purchase radio ads. Obviously the wrong answer, even to people who are not medical professionals or engineers.
Posts: 601
Threads: 147
Joined: Jul 2007
"I think that eating uncooked leafy vegetables poses by far the greatest risk."
I second that. Silka & friend got it from a kale smoothie. My old Italian mother-in-law taught me years ago to always soak leafy greens in heavy salted water. It removes the dirt, bugs & softens them up. Slugs & salt don't get along. However, I still NEVER eat any raw leafy vegetables here. There are many people I've met here who insist soaking in peroxide works for them, it's a crap shoot. When I asked Dr. Sue Garvey about that she said not proven. Nothing has been determined to successfully treat our edibles because there is no research money. JMHO
Posts: 664
Threads: 67
Joined: Mar 2016
Eating slugs is by far the greatest risk. However no one has good understanding of how this parasite propagates. The first case of Rat Lung occurred on Oahu 2 months ago. They were unable to find the cause of the infection. Hopefully having it hit closer to the legislature will motivate them to do something.
Officials say they looked into what the person ate and also surveyed the person’s home, work, and travel history, and could not pinpoint the source of infection.
No slugs were found and they know it was contracted on Oahu.
http://khon2.com/2017/08/23/investigatio...ble-cause/
Posts: 23
Threads: 5
Joined: Oct 2017
Posts: 664
Threads: 67
Joined: Mar 2016
Promising work at the University of Hawaii Hilo is drastically underfunded while $1 million is spent on public education about the disease.
Kana Covington had a worm in his left eye. He had to go all the way to Phoenix to find an eye surgeon willing to remove it, because doctors in Hawaii wouldn’t recognize the test that detected it. Now, thanks to a budget dispute at the Hawaii Legislature, the test that got him diagnosed may never reach the general public.
Covington, who lives on the Big Island. is a victim of rat lungworm disease.
The Big Island resident believes his nightmare began about two years ago with what he thought then was a “really strange flu” that involved body aches but no stomach or respiratory problems. Then he began noticing flashes of light and “floaters” in his eye.
He saw three different doctors in Hawaii; they prescribed eye drops, antibiotics and steroids and ran a battery of tests for everything from tuberculosis to HIV. All came back negative.
Covington heard from friends about a program run by Dr. Susan Jarvi and the University of Hawaii Hilo’s Rat Lungworm Working Group involving an experimental blood test for rat lungworm. He volunteered for the test group — and the test came back positive.
But the retina specialist he was seeing in Honolulu dismissed the test results.
see link for story
http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/11/alan-mc...diagnosis/
Here's one little important tid-bit from the article
“The DOH literature so far still says to wash them in water,” Jarvi said. “There’s no evidence that water kills the larvae. They live quite well in water for weeks.”
One of her lab’s projects has been identifying safe vegetable washes that would kill the larvae; until that study is finished, she says, the public won’t know how to safely clean fresh veggies.
One more bit about catchments
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.
Posts: 14,054
Threads: 424
Joined: Aug 2012
But that study would cost about $600,000.
Meanwhile, County wants to spend $300K to "plan/design" a park in HPP that will probably not be built. When will "the public" demand that their money be spent more effectively?
