What you don't know CAN hurt you- See if you know how this happened?

Here's a true-story medical mystery sent to me by a friend. See if you can figure out what happened, & do post your guesses below. I'll wait a while to post the rest of the story. ;)

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A man was home from work taking care of his sick child while his wife and the other children were at school. Suddenly the dog keeled over and died, and their other dog was having

seizures and looked terrible. The man called his wife and she ran home and scooped up the dogs and took them to the vet. Then the kids started coming home from school and there

was also a friend of one kid who came over. They all started getting sick and vomiting and having trouble breathing. At this point the man called 911 and got all the kids outside and

they all were taken to the hospital. The kids needed oxygen and their kidneys were showing some distress. They all eventually recovered and were discharged in 2-3 days, but had to

go to a hotel. In the meantime the CDC was called in to check out the house once carbon monoxide was ruled out, and to verify that they were not a drug family. The mom never

showed any symptoms, but was closely watched when she visited the others in the hospital, because it could not yet be ruled out that she had somehow poisoned her family.


They finally figured out what happened...do you know? Hint: It's animal-related. :cool:

Was it a nitrous gas like substance emitting from poop or urine just laying around? That’s my only guess.


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Originally Posted by Kam

Was it a nitrous gas like substance emitting from poop or urine just laying around? That’s my only guess.


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Nope, but keep trying...;)

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Nope, but keep trying...;)

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That’s all I have.


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Tell us? Please :)

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Originally Posted by Kam

That’s all I have.


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Don't feel bad at all, this is a tough one & I didn't figure it out either. But I promise it's something more people should know about, which is why I decided to share it here & for a bit of fun.

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Originally Posted by JacksReptiles

Tell us? Please :)

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Not yet...way too soon. :P

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Don't feel bad at all, this is a tough one & I didn't figure it out either. But I promise it's something more people should know about, which is why I decided to share it here & for a bit of fun.

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Not yet...way too soon. :P

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And that’s the sad part. It is going to be something simple and it is going to bother me until the riddle is solved.


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Originally Posted by Kam

And that’s the sad part. It is going to be something simple and it is going to bother me until the riddle is solved.


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It's something I've never heard of before, & fyi, I've always enjoyed medical-mystery shows. But it IS something that could potentially affect even some members here. ;)

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

It's something I've never heard of before, & fyi, I've always enjoyed medical-mystery shows. But it IS something that could potentially affect even some members here. ;)

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Le sigh!!!


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This story rings a bell. I'm pretty sure I've heard it somewhere else before...

Was it something to do with coral? I've heard stories of corals getting stressed and releasing some noxious compounds that caused health issues when aerosolized. Including some that were closely related to ones I used to keep, yikes!

I don't know the story, but, Carbon Monoxide (which was ruled out) would have been my first guess.

My second guess would be mold (description of symptoms resemble Fusarium)...since mycotoxins are allowed to exist in dog food: dogs can harbor some pretty nasty stuff. If a dog is suffering mycotoxicosis and is shedding spores in its saliva/urine: smaller respiratory systems (e.g. children) would be at a huge disadvantage. Even a healthy dog urinating on a rug repeatedly in the same spot can grow some toxic pathogens relatively fast.

Without more information it could be anything really though: maybe the dogs and kids all sat around together and ate a bad batch of crayons. :)

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Originally Posted by WrongPython

This story rings a bell. I'm pretty sure I've heard it somewhere else before...

Was it something to do with coral? I've heard stories of corals getting stressed and releasing some noxious compounds that caused health issues when aerosolized. Including some that were closely related to ones I used to keep, yikes!

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AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!!! :gj: :gj: :gj:

Apparently while the father was home with a sick kid, he just decided to clean their aquarium. Who knew? :confusd:

This is a write-up of a similar case (not the same one): https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6431a4.htm

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And this: https://www.discovermagazine.com/pla...store-near-you

PLANET EARTHWorld’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you

Not Exactly Rocket ScienceBy Ed YongApril 5, 2011 7:47 AM

https://images.ctfassets.net/cnu0m8r...h=433&fit=fill

Zoanthid

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In 2007, a man from Woodbridge, Virginia was rushed into hospital after inhaling an aerosolised version of one of the deadliest poisons on the planet. He was not the victim of a terrorist attack. He wasn’t working in a biohazard laboratory. He was trying to clean out his fish tank.
The man, who posts on the Reef Central Forums as Steveoutlaw, was trying to get rid of a colony of zoanthids – a relative of corals and sea anemones – that was infesting his aquarium rocks. He had heard that boiling water would do the trick. When he tried it, he accidentally inhaled some of the steam.
Twenty minutes later, his nose was running and he had a cough. Four hours later, his breathing was laboured and he was headed to the emergency room. By the time he arrived, he was suffering from severe coughing fits and chest pains. He was stabilised, but he developed asthma and a persistent cough, and had to use steroids and an inhaler for at least two months.





The reason for his sudden illness was palytoxin, a speciality of zoanthids, and the second deadliest poison in the natural world. One gram of the stuff will kill more than a hundred million mice. This poison, liberated by the boiling water, had risen into Steveoutlaw’s airways in a cloud of steam.
Palytoxin is shrouded in legend. Hawaiian islanders tell of a cursed village in Maui, whose members defied a shark god that had been eating their fellow villagers. They dismembered and burned the god, before scattering his ashes in a tide pool near the town of Hana. Shortly after, a mysterious type of seaweed started growing in the pool. It became known as “limu-make-o-Hana” (deadly seaweed of Hana). If smeared on a spear’s point, it could instantly kill its victims.
The shark god may have been an elaborate fiction, but in 1961, Philip Helfrich and John Shupe actually found the legendary pool. Within it, they discovered a new species of zoanthid called Palythoa toxica. The limu-make-o-Hana was real, but it wasn’t seaweed – it was a type of colonial anemone. In 1971, Richard Moore and Paul Scheuer isolated the chemical responsible for the zoanthid’s lethal powers – palytoxin. Now, Jonathan Deeds from the US Food and Drug Administration has found that the poison is readily available in aquarium stores.
Deeds was investigating a case of palytoxin poisoning when he heard about Steveoutlaw’s unfortunate incident. He visited the man, collected a sample of the offending zoanthid, and found that it was indeed heavy with palytoxin. It wasn’t hard to get his hands on more. Deeds bought 15 more colonies from three aquarium stores in the Washington DC area, of the same species that gave Steveoutlaw his whiff of toxic steam. Three of the samples yielded even more poison. Every gram contained enough palytoxin to kill 300,000 mice, or around 80 people.
Unfortunately, Deeds has no clear message for aquarium owners. Some of the zoanthid species that he tested weren’t toxic at all, and indeed, many people claim to have handled zoanthids for years without problems. However, those that contain palytoxin can kill if even a small amount of the poison gets on the skin. And, as Steveoutlaw found, even breathing in an aerosolised version of the poison is a bad idea. The problem is that telling zoanthids apart is incredibly difficult – Deeds only did it with any degree of certainty using genetic analysis.





And tracing the origins of these animals isn’t easy either. One of the aquarium owners who Deeds visited said that he got his zoanthids through mixed containers of corals and rock fragments, known as “frags”, with no information about their origins. The animals can be accidentally introduced on unsuspecting rocks. And many aquarium owners will break the rocks up themselves and exchange them between friends.
As Deeds wrote, “the legendary limu appears to be exacting its ancient curse once again, but this time upon unsuspecting marine home aquarists.” Owners are “often unaware of the deadly poisons they are being exposed to”.
PS Venom enthusiasts know that the potency of poisons is measured using the LD-50 – the dose that will kill half a group of mice after a set time. The most venomous snake has an LD-50 of 25 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. For tetrodotoxin, the equivalent figure is 8 micrograms. For batrachotoxin, the poison from the skin of poison dart frogs, it’s 2-7 micrograms. For palytoxin, it’s 0.3 micrograms (or 300 nanograms).
Reference: Deeds, J., Handy, S., White, K., & Reimer, J. (2011). Palytoxin Found in Palythoa sp. Zoanthids (Anthozoa, Hexacorallia) Sold in the Home Aquarium Trade PLoS ONE, 6 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018235

And I know some of our members here are into tropical fish & all, so for anyone not aware, I just thought this was well-worth sharing.

It's like something from an episode of HOUSE (the t.v. series), eh? I sure didn't guess it.

I didn't post it under "fish", just under "general pets" so I didn't give too much away.

glances nervously at my 125 gallon aquarium


It's freshwater so no "killer corals" but still. :weirdface

Ah, marine organisms. Sometimes you never know who's packing a toxic surprise!

Zoanthids are supposedly easy to keep, but I never had any luck with them. I had a bubble tip anemone thumb, though. :P

All this fish talk is making me miss reef keeping. Part of the reason I'm keeping the snake string on the smaller size is so I have room for a tank or two in the future. I'd love to restart the 29 gallon cube as a clownfish-anemone tank and something a bit larger for a proper reef. Anthias, six-line wrasse, dwarf angels, firefish, watchmen gobies, mandarin dragonets, Maxima clams, cleaner shrimp, pistol shrimp... there are a lot of marine critters I'd like to keep again or for the first time.

Have yet to try saltwater, and given the ludicrous amount of money I recently spent to upgrade my freshwater setup, it'll likely be a long while yet, if ever. Closest I ever got was a brackish paludarium setup for some fiddler crabs years ago. I even watched them spawn in the water, though given my inexperience at the time I had no idea how to feed the fry so none survived.

And this is why I'll just go right ahead and stick to my South American fw tank!
[emoji106]

Interesting read.

I've heard about this. It gets mentioned a lot when newbies are told why they shouldn't boil live rock. Another guy was suspected to have died from trying to clean out his aquarium too after it 'crashed' (catastrophic failure in the tank ecosystem that causes everything in it to die) after the ice storms. Reef tanks can turn into soupy biohazards.

Why would anyone thinking boiling live rock is a good idea, much less in their house? But yes some palys are do not touch, you don't want to frag them without gloves and eye protection and they are basically impossible to kill off. Easier to throw the whole rock with them on it away than try to salvage it in any way but drying it out and muriatic acid outside is the way to go if you want to try.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

......In 2007, a man from Woodbridge, Virginia was rushed into hospital after inhaling an aerosolised version of one of the deadliest poisons on the planet. He was not the victim of a terrorist attack. He wasn’t working in a biohazard laboratory. He was trying to clean out his fish tank.....

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Wow, that's about 30 minutes away from me...... I don't remember ever hearing about it on the news or in print... But it was a long time ago and I'm old so..... :D

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Originally Posted by Gocntry

Wow, that's about 30 minutes away from me...... I don't remember ever hearing about it on the news or in print... But it was a long time ago and I'm old so..... :D

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That kind of stuff doesn't usually make it to the news, I know on ReefCentral and most saltwater forums there's been a stickied post about the dangers palytoxins and other corals can have because there seems to be a high profile illness in the hobby from it at least every decade to learn from. Certain corals cause my hands to break out with itchy blisters, but after years of reefkeeping I've learned which ones and sold them off rather than deal with it, wearing gloves makes it really hard to work in the tank.

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Originally Posted by GoingPostal

That kind of stuff doesn't usually make it to the news, I know on ReefCentral and most saltwater forums there's been a stickied post about the dangers palytoxins and other corals can have because there seems to be a high profile illness in the hobby from it at least every decade to learn from. Certain corals cause my hands to break out with itchy blisters, but after years of reefkeeping I've learned which ones and sold them off rather than deal with it, wearing gloves makes it really hard to work in the tank.

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I'm glad to know they cover this issue on saltwater forums, but I'm also glad we've mentioned it here, because as we all know, far too many people get enthused about snakes in pet stores, at reptile expos or even when responding to personal ads about snakes, all too often before they learn what they need to know, so I can only imagine that the same thing happens with fish?

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Originally Posted by GoingPostal

That kind of stuff doesn't usually make it to the news, I know on ReefCentral and most saltwater forums there's been a stickied post about the dangers palytoxins and other corals can have because there seems to be a high profile illness in the hobby from it at least every decade to learn from. Certain corals cause my hands to break out with itchy blisters, but after years of reefkeeping I've learned which ones and sold them off rather than deal with it, wearing gloves makes it really hard to work in the tank.

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It's probably better to still use gloves. Fish have zoonotic diseases, any cuts can be infected with bacteria in the water like staph, anything on that's on the skin gets into the water, many saltwater tanks have bristleworms that are like water porcupines. I hope no one ever gets a fireworm (venomous). Ouch! Though I know what you mean by gloves getting in the way.