What to know about 'explosive diarrhoea' parasite outbreak in US

bbc.com

41 points·teleforce··9 comments

Doesn't sound fun. No vaccine, reoccurs, difficult to test, water treatment doesn't work, and treated with TMP-SMX.

About 10 years ago, I had a 2-week-long what was most likely cryptosporidiosis episode that was frequent, vigorous liquid.

Does irradiation work? Bit of a pain to try to irradiate this much lettuce I suppose.

https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra...

wash your vegetables and move on with your life.

Unfortunately, that is really bad advice in this case.

> Can washing remove Cyclospora?

> No. According to the CDC, there is currently no method known to completely eliminate Cyclospora from contaminated fresh produce. [0]

Thoroughly cooking your lettuce, and other vegetables, is the only way to reliably decontaminate in this case.

If you want to eat fresh vegetables, the correct solution is separating sewage from irrigation water.

[0] https://extension.psu.edu/ongoing-cyclospora-outbreak-highli...

Wait were does irrigation water come from in the US? They don't use tap water?

It’s typically sourced from natural/artificial surface bodies or pumped out of the ground.

Treated waste water is very commonly used as well. Just not normally for vegetables intended to be consumed fresh. Its mostly used to grow animal feed and non-food agricultural products.

Who uses tap water at scale for irrigation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation

> the correct solution is separating sewage from irrigation water.

This sounds a bit too advanced for the nation that came up with the atom bomb and the first man on the moon and the transistor.

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