FGCU professor says tap water is safe after amoeba death in Charlotte County

CHARLOTT COUNTY, Florida – Is tap water safe in Charlotte County? Charlotte County leaders won’t say after the CDC confirmed Fox 4 a man in Charlotte County has died from a rare amoebic infection.

An infection that could have gotten in through the tap water when they were rinsing their sinuses.

It began after Charlotte County recognized the amoeba Thursday morning in a press release. It says several agencies are working with utilities to identify any potential links to the amoeba and take what the county called any “necessary corrective action.”

After receiving no response from the Florida Department of Health, Fox 4 reached out to a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University School of Aquatics to ask if tap water was safe.

The county declined to be interviewed by Fox 4 or answer any specific questions, providing only the following statement:

“Usually, tap water is fine,” said Dr. Barry Rosen, who has been studying aquatic organisms for the past 40 years. “There shouldn’t be anything wrong with your tap water. It should have enough chlorine in it, and it should be cleaned on the way.”

He can’t talk about the case in Charlotte County, but he can explain how the amoeba, Nagleria fowleri, can be found in tap water.

“Typically, municipal wastewater treatment plants contain enough chlorine that when it is distributed,” Rosen said, “there should not be any organisms that could cause this kind of problem.”

The problem he’s talking about is the amoeba. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the deceased Florida patient may have become contaminated with tap water from daily sinus gargling. Rosen says it can be used once or daily, they can become infected if an amoeba is present.

However, Rosen believes that this is most likely not a water treatment plant at all.

“It could be contamination due to a broken line. It can live in the soil,” Rosen said. “You can’t do [tests] generally routine. There is no easy way to do this.”

Rosen says this particular amoeba is hard to see under a microscope. A single drop test does not account for thousands of gallons of water. He also says that there is no simple chemical test that could be used. Instead, he suggests using bacteria as a proxy.

This means that if bacteria floats up, which it shouldn’t, something could get into the system. If so, Rosen says flushing with chlorine or boosting the levels will help get rid of the amoeba.

While the Utilities Department didn’t speak to Fox 4, we did find some information about water disinfection on their website that says it’s done with a mixture of chlorine and ammonia.

There are also regulations that municipalities must follow through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

It is important to note that it is extremely rare to get infected with them. It occurs naturally in freshwater rivers and lakes, Rosen said, but even more rarely, infection occurs through tap water.