Lake Mead visitors are warned to avoid putting their heads underwater while visiting hot springs near famed reservoir over fears they’re contaminated with brain-eating amoeba
Officials at Lake Mead are warning visitors not to submerge their heads under the water of a popular hot spring near the Hoover Dam for fear it is contaminated with a brain-eating amoeba.
The deadly organism Naegleria fowleri has been found hiding in the hot springs when conditions are right, officials at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area have warned.
‘Naegleria fowleri was found in hot springs,’ said a statement released this week.
‘This amoeba enters through the nose and can cause a fatal infection that causes a sudden and severe headache, fever and vomiting. It is advised to avoid diving, splashing water, or immersing your head in hot spring water.’
The death of two-year-old Woodrow Turner Bundy in July was attributed to a brain-eating amoeba so deadly that only four people in the US have ever caught it and lived to tell the tale.
Visitors to Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead hot springs have been told not to immerse their heads in the nearby hot springs because of a possible brain-eating amoeba
N. fowleri is a brain-eating amoeba that causes the sudden onset of severe symptoms and often leads to brain damage and death
Bundy’s family told media at the time that he contracted the amoeba a few weeks earlier while swimming in Ash Springs near the town of Alamo, which is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.
His parents first noticed something was wrong when the boy started having ‘flu-like symptoms’ and he was rushed to hospital, where doctors first thought he had meningitis, but realized too late that he actually had Naegleria fowleri.
This amoeba can live in warm freshwater environments – such as hot springs – and can cause a disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).
PAM usually results in severe brain damage. The infection is in fact mostly fatal.
The amoeba has a 97 percent fatality rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Millions are exposed to the amoeba each year, but N. fowleri infection is rare.
The CDC reported fewer than five cases of infection annually for each year from 2013 to 2022.
Statistically speaking, most brain-eating amoeba infections occur in boys 14 years of age and younger. CDC experts remain unsure as to why this is.
The amoeba has a 97 percent fatality rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Statistically speaking, most brain-eating amoeba infections occur in boys 14 years of age and younger. CDC experts remain unsure as to why this is
The single-celled organism is found in its highest concentrations in freshwater that is 75 degrees or warmer and remains that temperature for long periods of time.
Lake Mead Park often closes some trails leading to hot springs when summer temperatures become extremely hot. These routes are usually reopened on 1 October.
However, some of the springs remain accessible via the Colorado River, on which the Hoover Dam is formed.
Kali Hardig, now 22, and from Arkansas, was just 12 years old when she was struck down by Naegleria fowleri, which doctors think she caught at a water park.
They told her it was a ‘death sentence’ and gave her just four days to live, but a decade later she is swimming again and became a mother for the first time last November. She only occasionally struggles with blurred vision in her left eye due to scar tissue from the disease.
Woodrow Bundy died after being infected with brain-eating amoeba in July of this year
Kali Hardig (22) survived her infection with the brain-eating amoeba from a decade ago. She became a mother last November with daughter Adalynn (shown with Kali) who is now 10 months old. She also still occasionally has blurred vision in her left eye
Caleb Ziegelbauer (14) was infected with the amoeba about a year ago after swimming at a river mouth. He can now stand up, walk and talk somewhat, although he still needs a wheelchair
Fourteen-year-old Caleb Ziegelbauer, from Florida, is also now a year on from being infected with the microscopic species that kills 97 percent of its victims.
Caleb now walks somewhat but the damage to his brain means he has to communicate with facial expressions and uses a wheelchair.
Official records show that 157 people in the US were infected with the disease between 1962 and 2022, of which only four survived.
Five deaths from the amoeba have been reported this year, with the latest being a one-year-old toddler from Arkansas who died on September 4.
There are fears that warming temperatures will heat freshwater pools across the country, leaving more people at risk from the amoeba.