One Health

shows a grouping of hot dog shaped bacteria, each with a single hairlike appendage, called a flagellum. It's a picture of vibrio vulnificus

Vibrio survivor, wife warn of bacteria’s risks

September 6, 2019 by Coastal Review Online

Vibrio survivor, wife warn of bacteria’s risks - North Carolina Health News

After hurricanes, floodwaters can contain bacteria such as vibrio which can kill about one in five people who contract it. Officials urge caution in the wake of storms.

By Trista Talton

Coastal Review Online

Fifteen minutes.

That’s roughly the amount of time Richard Flaherty spent in 2 to 3 inches of flood waters helping a neighbor in Oriental the day after Hurricane Florence made landfall last year.

Twenty-four hours later, Flaherty’s left leg had been amputated above the knee. His odds of survival were 50-50 before his leg was removed.

“That’s when my prayers started immediately that he was going to be on the good side of 50,” said his wife, Penny Flaherty.

Within three days following the amputation in CarolinaEast Medical Center in New Bern, Richard Flaherty, then 77, was back in the operating room. This time, doctors removed a chunk of flesh and muscle from his right calf.

Bacteria known as Vibrio vulnificus, which he came into contact with in the floodwaters Sept. 15, 2018, had migrated.

Penny Flaherty remembers well what the doctor who amputated her husband’s leg said when he saw Richard three weeks after that initial operation: “You’re my miracle man.”

“I think it is,” a miracle, Penny Flaherty said.

Contaminated waters

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in five people with the infection die, sometimes within a couple of days after the bacteria enter the body.

shows a man who has an artifical leg. He lost the leg as a result of a vibrio infection. — Richard Flaherty stands inside his home in Oriental on his new prosthetic leg. His left leg was amputated Sept. 16, 2018, after he contracted the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus while helping a neighbor in flood waters following Hurricane Florence. Photo credit: Contributed by Flaherty family

In the midst of hurricane season, which runs June 1 – Nov. 30, Penny Flaherty wants to warn others by sharing her husband’s story.

“This should promptly be put out there before hurricane season,” she said.

While V. vulnificus is a concern following hurricanes, the bacteria are not directly related to pollution, but occur naturally in warm waters such as bays, estuaries and rivers close to the ocean during the summer months.

About 80 percent of vibrio infections occur between May and October, according to the CDC.

The CDC estimates vibriosis causes 80,000 illnesses each year in the U.S. About 52,000 contract it as the result of eating contaminated shellfish. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the most commonly reported species and is estimated to cause 45,000 illnesses a year in the U.S.

Between 1999 and 2003, 27 North Carolinians were infected by V. vulnificus, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. Seventy percent of those cases were wound infections, many as a result of someone cutting or scratching themselves while handling crabs or having an open wound, cut or sore and coming into contact where there were high levels of the bacteria in brackish waters.

A Wilmington man died Sept. 25 last year after cutting his leg during hurricane cleanup and getting floodwater into the wound. That same day, New Hanover County officials issued a press release warning about the risk of vibrio.

Richard Flaherty did not have so much as a scratch on his ankle when he walked into the floodwaters last September, his wife said. But, he has thin skin, she added, and a history of skin cancers resulting from radiation exposure during his time in the Air Force. Those factors may have made him more susceptible to the bacteria.

Those who cannot avoid coming into contact with flood waters are urged to take the following precautions:

Wear clothes and shoes that protect you from cuts and scrapes when in brackish or salt water.
Wear protective gloves.
Wash wounds and cuts thoroughly with soap and water if they have been exposed to brackish, salt, flood waters, or even raw seafood or seafood juices.
Cover your wound with a waterproof bandage if there’s a possibility it could come into contact with brackish or salt waters, floodwaters or raw seafood or seafood juices.
If you develop a skin infection, tell your medical provider if your skin has come into contact with brackish or salt waters, floodwaters or raw seafood or seafood juices.
Always wash your hands with soap and water after handing raw shellfish.
Avoid contaminating cooked shellfish with raw shellfish and its juices.
Have the following vaccines: Hepatitis A, Td (Tetanus & Diphtheria), and Tdap (Tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis).

The symptoms of infected wounds include pain, swelling and redness that may rapidly spread or blister.

“It looked like it could have been a spider bite, maybe a snake bite,” Penny Flaherty said of her husband’s wound, which started as a little red mark on his right ankle.

Tense 24 hours

Emergency medical technicians who responded to her 911 call on the evening of Sept. 15 gave her husband Benadryl and Tylenol and instructed him to take those medications every few hours, she said.

When Penny Flaherty started to administer the medications to her husband at 5 a.m. the following day, the red spot had spread to blood-filled, oozing blisters, she said.

“I was so stunned that I called 911 immediately,” she said. “He was in a lot of pain and his temperature was about 103.”

shows a burly bearded guy in shorts and a t shirt inside a lab, he's displaying some equipment on a table — After Hurricane Florence in 2018, UNC associate professor Brett Froelich distributed kits containing a sterile swab, culture medium, gloves, instructions and consent forms to be given to providers around the coastal area who might see patients with wounds infected by Vibrio species. Photo credit: Rose Hoban

Emergency responders assisted her husband down the stairs from the front door of their home and into an ambulance, she said. Richard Flaherty was diagnosed with V. vulnificus at the hospital.

Pamlico County officials do not have a record of anyone contracting the bacteria last September, according to Chris Murray, Pamlico County’s Emergency Management director and fire marshal.

“We are very aware of waterborne illnesses,” he said. “We’re very versed in it and aware of it.”

Richard Flaherty spent almost 22 days in the intensive care unit. He was discharged from the hospital after 41 days.

There’s been nearly six months of wound care and physical therapy. The Flahertys’ bedroom in their home across the street from the Neuse River in Oriental has been converted to something more of hospital room.

They’ve dealt with red tape while seeking help to cover some of the costs for everything from his wheelchair to physical therapy teaching him how to walk on a prosthetic leg.

They continue to travel to Durham every two weeks for immune infusion treatments, something he has been receiving for three months now, Penny Flaherty said.

“I have been the ever-present nurse on duty 24/7,” she said. “My care for him is what I do. That’s my full-time job. We’re making changes almost every week about something. But there’s things that will never change and things he will never do again. We both cry a lot. We laugh a lot.”

shows a deer with ribs showing through it's patchy fur, head hanging

Deer chronic wasting disease spread making biologists and lawmakers wary

June 14, 2019 by Emily Davis

Deer chronic wasting disease spread making biologists and lawmakers wary - North Carolina Health News

What was an isolated problem in the Western U.S. has been steadily spreading. N.C. based wildlife biologists are urging surveillance and changing some hunting practices.

By Emily Davis

It’s been a while since Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf, a research professor at North Carolina State’s School of Veterinary Medicine, last held a lecture on chronic wasting disease, a transmissible, chronic, progressive neurological disease in deer.

The disease is spreading through many parts of the country but has not yet been detected in North Carolina. When Kennedy-Stoskopf recently checked in on the disease’s spread, she was shocked.

“We always used to joke that eventually, it would get here, but it’s clearly moving faster than anybody predicted,” she said.

Chronic wasting disease is just what it says: The disease slowly kills animals in the cervid family, primarily deer, but also moose and elk. The disease is wiping out some deer populations across the United States, but slowly.

According to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, modeling shows big declines, or even localized extinction of affected animals, over a period of 50 to 200 years following the arrival of the disease.

Since first showing up in the American West, CWD has inched its way into other parts of the country, including the Southeast. Positive cases have been found as close as western Tennessee and northern Virginia, and state lawmakers, conservationists and hunters are getting worried.

Part of their worry is whether the disease will ever make the jump to humans.

Sci-fi strangeness

“My presence here … tells us about the importance of everyone wrapping their head around this pretty significant disease problem,” said Mark Ruder, a researcher from the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia, who gave a presentation to the House Wildlife Resources Committee at the North Carolina General Assembly in May.

The exact origin of CWD is unknown, but it was first observed in a Colorado deer in 1967. Ruder explained it wasn’t until years later that researchers recognized it as a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease. There’s an exceedingly rare human form of genetic TSE too, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

shows distribution of the deer disease and how it's spread from one or two states to being pretty widespread across the intermountain west, midwest and northeast — Top map shows the known distribution around 2000, however CWD may have been in other regions already, undetected.
2005: After CWD was detected in Wisconsin in 2002, states ramped up surveillance efforts, aided by federal assistance.
After 2011, federal support for state-based surveillance greatly diminished, states had to fund their own surveillance efforts. Some states were more aggressive than others.
2019: The latest CWD distribution map. Map, data credit: Bryan Richards, USGS

At present, only BSE has made the jump from cows to humans.

What these diseases have in common is they’re all caused by prions – what Ruder described as “abnormal forms of proteins.” He characterized prions as possessing a “sci-fi type strangeness.” They’re not viruses, they don’t carry genetic material. They’re not bacteria, they can’t be killed.

“Prions are not your typical infectious agents,” Ruder said. “In simple terms, this can kind of punch holes in the brain.”

Most CWD infected deer appear completely healthy, sometimes for years, until they’re not. He said clinical signs include a lack of fear, weight loss, copious salivation or hair standing up straight.

Prions are not only shed by deer carcasses but can spread in the environment through urine, feces, saliva and even antler velvet. An infected deer is likely shedding contagious prions months, if not years before clinical signs appear, Ruder said. CWD can only be detected in the blood when animals are in the terminal stages of the disease or post-mortem sampling.

Getting those prions out of the environment is next to impossible. A study in Colorado found two years after a CWD-infected carcass had completely decomposed, animals coming in contact with the soil could still contract the disease.

“If you were to design a pathogen that you want to be the most formidable pathogen, there’s not a whole lot that you would do very much different,” Ruder said.

Spreading fast

Wildlife biologist Bryan Richards has been tracking CWD’s spread for 15 years, since he was hired by the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center, following the initial detection of CWD in Wisconsin. His work in mapping the distribution of the disease has shown a dramatic spread over the last 19 years.

“We know from experience that once disease becomes established in a free-ranging population, the odds of eliminating that disease are pretty negligible,” Richards said. And once the disease is in one environment, it can easily spread to another.

shows a tissue slide from the brain of a BSE affected cow. BSE is caused by prions, which also cause deer chronic wasting disease. — This photomicrograph of a brain tissue specimen, reveals the tissue changes that were found in a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also referred to as mad cow disease. Note the presence of numerous vacuoles, or microscopic holes in the gray matter, imparting the spongy appearance to the brain of BSE-affected cows. Photo credit: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture – Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS

According to Richards, those tiny prions have two primary ways of getting around: by animals and by people. Deer directly spread the disease to one another, in a slow diffusion that Ruder compared to a wildfire. When people get involved, Ruder said the spread is more like a “bus ride,” especially when humans move animals across state lines. Interactions with humans through activities such as deer farming and hunting allow the disease to move long distances quickly.

Richards said that as the geographic footprint of the disease has changed and grown, people are taking the disease more seriously.

Rep. Jay Adams (R-Hickory), chair of the House Committee on Wildlife Resource Management, said he ranks the disease as the number one issue for which the committee must prepare.

“If this were to arrive in North Carolina by a natural pathway, it would take a long time, but if somebody delivered it to us in a truck, it could be this afternoon,” Adams told the committee.

He said he’s looked deeply into CWD and has become increasingly concerned.

“I’m burdening you with the knowledge I’ve been carrying around for about four years,” Adams said. “The first moment that you decide that this is significant, you never back away from it, it becomes more and more and more significant.”

A growing concern

CWD has not been found in any West Coast states and lacks a strong presence in the Southeast. According to Richards, there can be two reasons for this absence.

“A, CWD has not gotten to those locations, or B, it hasn’t been detected in those locations,” he said.

Recently in western Tennessee, widespread testing was conducted after ten deer tested positive for the disease. According to a wildlife researcher in the state, the results at the end of an extended surveillance season revealed 186 positive deer in three counties out of 3,132 animals taken, for an overall prevalence of 8.66 percent in the affected area.

CWD had likely been spreading unseen in the state for a long time before it was identified.

For Richards, state surveillance is key to preventing the spread of CWD.

Jonathan Shaw has been a state deer biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission for four years.

Shaw said the commission is doing everything to prevent the disease from coming to the state, but they are also preparing for the possibility that it may arrive despite their best efforts. This preparation includes a response plan and hunting activity restrictions.

The Commission has a rule prohibiting the importation of whole carcasses and high-risk carcass parts into the state. These high-risk parts include the nervous system, brain and spinal tissue, where the prions concentrate.

According to Shaw, they are also looking into the possibility of prohibiting the use of urine in baiting deer.

Hard conversations

For Luke Weingarten, the chair of the N.C. chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, CWD is a constant concern.

“We’re super happy that we don’t have it here,” Weingarten said. “Although I think that every responsible, thoughtful person probably needs to finish that sentence with the word ‘yet.’”

Adams told the committee that implementing necessary measures against the disease will prove a challenge for lawmakers.

For example, restrictions on hunters baiting for deer, such as the urine baiting ban suggested by the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, are expected to be contentious issues.

“In North Carolina, I think baiting is something that’s been happening culturally for so long, that that’s going to be a heavy lift,” Weingarten said. “But it’s a conversation that absolutely needs to be had.”

Weingarten said he expects hard conversations between the stakeholders involved in state wildlife, including hunters, conservationists and state lawmakers, but he is happy to see outreach and prevention happening.

“If that turns out to be science-based data telling us baiting ain’t great, then we need to take a good hard look at what we’re doing in terms of baiting wildlife, and deer specifically,” he said. “I expect an argument, but that’s ok, we can argue.”

Humans at risk?

Species barriers refer to the natural obstacle for diseases that prevent them from spreading between different species. They’re the reason you can’t give the flu to your dog, and the reason why a deer in your backyard shouldn’t be able to give you CWD.

There is currently no evidence of CWD infecting humans, but a 2017 experimental study suggests the possibility.

The decade-long, $7.9 million study by Canadian researchers used macaques as genetically similar human stand-ins and studied the spread of CWD in the primates under lab conditions. The study, which is still in progress, wanted to mimic the kind of exposure humans have with deer, including consumption, field dressing, and transfusion.

The researchers have found evidence of successful transmission. Two-thirds of macaques orally fed muscle tissue of infected deer had CWD by years five and six of the study.

It should be noted that, although the tissues used in the research are raw, CWD prions can’t be cooked out of venison, according to Ruder.

Nonetheless, the results of the Canadian study have been concerning enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published stricter recommendations in response.

According to Ruder, the macaque study does not mean CWD is going to infect people.

“It tells us that the species barrier that we’ve wanted to rely heavily on for many years is maybe not as robust as we once thought it was,” Ruder said. “The potential is there.”

A different, 2018 study with macaques found no evidence of transmission.

Kennedy-Stoskopf said although macaques are the closest you can get to humans, it’s inconclusive with just two experimental studies.

“I know that I’ve eaten sheep that have been infected with scrapie (another prion disease) when I was living in Michigan, and that was 40 years ago,” Kennedy-Stoskopf said.

Another study suggested the prions could have a decades-long incubation period in humans.

The 2017 review article on CWD research, published in the journal, Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, said despite little evidence of human transmission, researchers hypothesize “a CWD prion more readily transmissible to humans could emerge over time given sufficiently extensive human exposure.”

Limited long-term studies and contradicting evidence means it is hard to make any sure conclusions on the risk CWD poses to hunters and the general public.

“The bottom line is the research is not definitive,” said Richards. “It’s likely a small risk that CWD could cross over into a human host, but the risk is not zero.”

shows pieces of a cardboard eggcrate covered with roaches. small speckles dot the cardboard.

Bug bombs are duds at killing insects yet may pose harm to people, study finds

February 8, 2019 by Fair Warning

Bug bombs are duds at killing insects yet may pose harm to people, study finds - North Carolina Health News

They fill the air with insecticide, don't really penetrate to where the critters are and leave many surfaces coated by pesticide residue that can linger for weeks.

By Eli Wolfe

Fair Warning

A new study has found that bug bombs, which are used by millions of Americans to kill insects such as cockroaches, often fail to eradicate those pests and yet expose consumers to potential health risks.

shows a man in a plaid flannel shirt applying bug bait with a syringe under a cabinet — Researcher Zachary DeVries applying insecticide as part of a recent study on bug bombs.

Researchers from North Carolina State University reported last week that their tests on several types of bug bombs showed that they killed, at most, 38 percent of the wild cockroaches in the spaces where they were used.

Previous studies have shown that the aerosol devices — which douse a room with a fine mist of insecticides and are more formally known as total-release foggers – don’t penetrate crevices and cracks where bugs can thrive. The new study revealed an additional problem: bug bombs deposit significant amounts of insecticide where humans are likely to come into contact with it, such as on tabletops, kitchen counters and floors.

When the North Carolina researchers swabbed rooms exposed to bug bombs, they discovered that many surfaces were coated by pesticide residue that lingered for several weeks.

Zachary DeVries, one of the North Carolina researchers, called the results alarming. He said he and his colleagues followed all of the steps specified on the product labels that are supposed to guarantee consumer safety.

“To put people at risk, you have to have some justification for it,” DeVries said. If bug bombs efficiently wiped out cockroaches while exposing humans to small amounts of pesticide, he said, their use might be justifiable. But, he continued, “at the end of this study, there was no positive that came out of it.”

S.C. Johnson & Son, which markets several of the insecticide products used in the North Carolina study, did not respond to a request for comment.

Zach DeVries shows about two weeks' supply of rabbit blood used to feed the entomology lab's bedbugs. — Zach DeVries shows off blood based bait used to feed the bugs in the NC State University entomology lab. Photo credit: Rose Hoban

Federal figures indicate that about 50 million Americans used total-release foggers in 2010. Over the last two decades, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 3,688 cases of consumers who were sickened after accidentally exposing themselves to bug bombs. The CDC also documented several deaths, but most incidents involved non-fatal and temporary symptoms, including coughing, difficulty breathing, vomiting, nausea and abdominal pain.

Still, little is known about the potential long-term effects of exposure to synthetic pyrethroids, the main insecticide agent in bug bombs.

After the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of most organophosphate insecticides in household products in 2001, the synthetic pyrethroids class of chemicals was billed as a safer active ingredient.

Research has found that pyrethroids, which resemble natural pyrethrin compounds, break down more quickly than similar chemicals, and are less toxic to mammals. But Dr. Youssef Oulhote, a University of Massachusetts epidemiologist, contends that pyrethroids are closely linked to behavioral problems in children.

Oulhote documented the association in a 2013 study in which he analyzed the urine samples of 779 Canadian children. He discovered that children with a higher concentration of pyrethroid products in their urine were twice as likely as their peers to suffer behavioral issues. Several longitudinal studies since then have found similar associations between prenatal exposure to pyrethroids and increased incidence of ADHD and other cognitive problems in children.

Oulhote said it wasn’t surprising that a chemical designed to attack the central nervous system of insects could have a similar effect on humans. He said it’s troubling to see new data that confirms pyrethroids can persist in the environment for weeks without breaking down.

“Just because they’re less toxic doesn’t mean they are safe,” he said.

The EPA has given mixed signals about potential hazards associated with pyrethroids. In 2011, the agency completed a cumulative risk assessment that found the insecticides “do not pose risk concerns” for children or adults.

But the same year, the agency forced manufacturers to improve the labels on bug bombs following several high-profile reports about injuries. The impact of the stronger labels—which include pictograms and clearer instructions—was cast in doubt by a CDC report last year that said they brought no significant reduction in the rate of injuries.

Hurdles to Testing Food for GenX

April 25, 2018 by Catherine Clabby

Hurdles to Testing Food for GenX - North Carolina Health News

The science must catch up with the desire by some to test food for GenX and other industrial chemicals from a Chemours plant.

By Catherine Clabby

Will Cain drove the carcass of a dead calf from Cumberland County to a state lab in Raleigh early this month hoping someone, someday can tell him if chemical pollution harmed it.

Cain raises beef cattle on multiple plots north of the sprawling Chemours chemical factory property south of Fayetteville, including land about two miles away. Like some farmers nearby, he wonders if recently detected chemical pollution from the plant in air, soil or water threatens his livestock or other food raised nearby.

“The consumer has the right to know,” said Cain, who sells cattle to feedlots in corn-rich states such as Kansas to fatten them up before they are slaughtered and their meat readied for market.

Let’s be clear: Aside from a GenX chemical found in one sample of local honey, there is no publicly known evidence that industrial pollution released by Chemours or DuPont, the previous owner, has tainted foods raised nearby.

State officials are still assessing whether testing is needed in the vicinity of company’s 2,150 acres. Developing a means to conduct meaningful tests of food, they stress, would be a complex task that will take time.

For one, they would need to find or develop methods that detect per- or polyfluroalkyl (PFAS) compounds such as what is commonly called GenX in very different types of organisms, potentially from blueberries to swine. State officials also would need solid data on levels at which contamination could pose a risk to people or the environment.

“You can’t just collect samples of a turnip crop or a collard crop in someone’s garden, send it to the lab, get back a range of values, and not be able to tell the public what it means. We want to be able to say whether it’s safe in food or soil or groundwater,” said Michael Scott, Division of Waste Management director for the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Big challenge

Scientists around the world are raising alarms about PFAS chemical contamination because it potentially carries a triple threat. The chemicals are so tough that they don’t break down in nature; they can accumulate in the tissues of people and other living things, including edible plants; and some bring known or suspect health risks.

Because the compounds are soluble in water, they don’t stay in one place either, instead traveling down rivers, through soils and with rain storms.

PFAS chemicals originating from the Chemours site, on the border of Bladen and Cumberland counties, have been found in residential drinking wells three miles away, in rainwater collected at seven miles distance, and many tens of miles away in drinking water drawn from the Cape Fear in and near Wilmington.

photograph of the industrial site on the border between Cumberland and Bladen Counties — A portion of the industrial compound that Chemours operates on some 2,000 acres wedged between the Cape Fear Riiver and NC Route 87, right where Cumberland and Bladen counties meet. Photo credit: Catherine Clabby

So do plants or animals living close by harbor the chemicals too?

“The food is the next frontier,” said N.C. State University scientist Detlef Knappe, one of the small group of researchers who first detected Chemours chemicals in drinking water in this state.

Members of his laboratory have collected some food grown near Chemours but high-confidence testing remains a work in progress, Knappe said.

Signals from afar

Signals exist that food could be a concern.

In Ohio and West Virginia communities exposed to PFAS released by the DuPont plant now owned by Chemours, people who ate locally-grown vegetables had higher blood levels than others who didn’t. (Blood and urine of North Carolinians downstream of Chemours have been collected too but results are not yet known.)

Sampling has detected PFAS compounds in home gardens near PFAS pollution sites abroad and in Minnesota. Small amounts of GenX were found in plants grown very close to a Chemours plant in The Netherlands, for instance.

Researchers at both locations concluded that the detected amounts in the two spots were low enough that people did not need to stop eating food from their gardens in both places.

But you can’t use studies made at one polluted place to determine risks from PFAS contamination in another place, said Deanna Scher, the principal epidemiologist, and James Kelly, a surveillance and assessment manager at Minnesota’s Department of Health.

Related stories:
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Did DuPont and Chemours Chemicals Taint Food?

That’s because contamination levels and other factors differ, just one part of the difficulty of assessing risks from unregulated PFAS that did not undergo rigorous, publicly disclosed health testing before being put to work, they said. “It’s frustrating to have to learn after the fact when the horse is out of the barn and to explain to people we don’t have many of the answers,” Kelly said.

State health officials in North Carolina are testing fish caught in polluted waters near Chemours for PFAS. If comprehensive agricultural testing happens here, it appears that the job will be split between state environmental and agriculture departments.

A memo written by Joe Reardon, assistant commissioner for the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, recommended that DEQ officials focus any sampling they conduct “on commodities that are not entering commerce.”

That’s because the agriculture agency has jurisdiction over marketed agriculture, Reardon said.

Plus, testing without solid information about the risks from contaminants could give inaccurate impressions, said Reardon and agriculture department public affairs director Andrea Ashby.

“We are concerned that the collection of samples without an approved method or toxicological standard to reflect the significance of the findings could create unnecessary consumer anxiety and could negatively affect products’ ability to move in commerce,” Ashby said

Scott, the DEQ director, and NCSU’s Knappe agree that reliable testing and risk assessments standards are needed. Toxicologists with DEQ and the state Department of Health and Human Services are exploring what’s known, Scott said.

State officials until now have depended on a state provisional health goal of 140 parts per trillion as the threshold above which consuming GenX chemicals in drinking water over a lifetime has been posited to pose a health threat.

The US Environmental Protection Agency this summer is expected to release its awaited toxicity assessments for two forms of GenX chemicals, the dimer salt version and another version of Hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO), compounds used in the industrial process that Chemours calls GenX.

EPA is also expected to quantify a reference dose, the amount of chemical someone can ingest for a lifetime without anticipating harm.

Waiting

Cain, who drove that calf carcass to the state Rollins Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Raleigh this month, grew concerned about possible contamination after five calves in his herd of about 200 died during a 10-day span this month, he said.

Cain had sold cows to a close friend, Jeremy Singletary, who lost five calves and adult cows on land about three miles north of Chemours he said he rented about two years ago.

Singletary said a friend froze one dead calf in case it could one day be tested for PFAS contamination.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you GenX is killing my cows,” Singletary said by phone on Tuesday. “But I do need to know some type of answer.”

Low levels of GenX were recently detected in Robeson County, across the river from Chemours, in its water system and in a swamp about seven miles from the plant. It’s been detected in drinking wells there too.

William Canady, a fifth-generation farmer based in Robeson County, said he has not had mysterious problems with cattle, which he also raises about seven miles from Chemours. But he would like to know if any industrial compounds can be detected in his animals or among the long list of produce he raises for sale, including field corn, sweet corn, soybeans, oats, strawberries and watermelon.

“A lot of people work at that plant. I think the pay can be pretty good,” Canady said. “I just hate to see it doing damage to the community.”

To be cautious, he no longer feeds his cows any of the hay Chemours allowed him to harvest on its property the year before last.

He also wonders if the state has more options than testing commercial livestock to start getting a look at whether PFAS chemical may be tainting meat.

“There are a lot of deer right around that plant,” Canady said. ”They ought to test those deer. And move out from there.”

NOAA photograph of blue green algae floating on water next to a dock.

Sounding the Toxic Algae Alarm

April 20, 2017 by Catherine Clabby

Sounding the Toxic Algae Alarm - North Carolina Health News

With evidence that potentially dangerous algal blooms are becoming more common, a push is on to better understand and broadcast their dangers.

By Catherine Clabby

Harmful algal blooms, particularly the periodic explosive growth of cyanobacteria species, appear to be increasing in frequency and severity globally, researchers from the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say.

While most algae pose no risk, harmful algal blooms, whether green or reddish masses floating on the surface of water, can produce toxins that even in tiny amounts can harm people.

Young children are likely at greatest risk.

Swallowing or swimming in water during a dangerous bloom can produce skin rashes, liver injury and neurological changes. Toxic algae metabolites can also harm or kill pets and livestock.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality confirmed the presence of potentially harmful cyanobacteria algae 19 times across North Carolina during the summer of 2016 alone.

How many potentially harmful blooms occurred in North Carolina in 2016 is unknown. State officials did detect cyanobacteria toxins called microcystin at five locations: Pamlico Sound, Albemarle Sound, a Brunswick County storm water pond, a Davie County pond and Greenfield Lake in New Hanover County, said Cobey Culton, a state Department of Health and Human Services spokesman.

The same uncertainty exists nationally. Blooms occur unpredictably and are not always documented, never mind assessed for their full chemical content.

“We need more data to inform prevention and mitigation of harmful-bloom health effects,” said Lorri Backer, a senior CDC environmental epidemiologist who spoke this week at a meeting of the North Carolina One Health Collaborative at Research Triangle Park.

a series of four photos, two showing green slime floating on waterways, the other two are microscopic views of algae organisms — A DEQ analysis of algae blooming in the Tuckasegee River where it reaches Lake Fontana last June tentatively identified the mass as a bloom of a Dolichospermum species, which may be capable of making toxins. Photos courtesy: NC Dept. of Environmental Quality

To achieve more clarity on this risk nationally, the CDC has launched a surveillance program, One Health Harmful Algal Bloom System. Public health programs in states, including North Carolina, report human and animal illness linked to algae exposure, as well as environmental conditions where the blooms occur.

The goal is to expand understanding and prevention of harmful blooms and illnesses associated with them.

Why now?

Scientists link evidence of increased incidences of toxic algal blooms to climate change. Because algae have been around for millions of years, they have adapted to live pretty much anywhere on this planet.

But they often thrive in warmer waters and as Earth’s surface temperatures rise, so does that water.

Thick green sludge floats on top of a waterway up until a bulkhead. — DEQ’s water sciences lab identified algae blooming in Edenton Bay off the Chown River last July as Dolichospermum planctonicum, a filamentous blue green algae that is capable of producing cyanotoxins. Source: NC DEQ

It doesn’t help that human activities feed algae. Nitrogen and phosphorous that wash into our waterways from lawn and crop fertilizers, livestock animal manure, and underperforming sewage treatment plants are nutrients that feed algae.

North Carolina is no stranger to these blooms. They appear here mostly in freshwater ponds and sometimes quite dramatically in rivers, including the Chowan River last summer, said Mark Vander Borgh, a DEQ senior environmental biologist.

Sometimes they surge in estuaries as well, he said.

But they occur unpredictably, which can make them hard to catch, never mind quantify. Even as DEQ receives more complaints than ever, agency staff can’t say conclusively that more are occurring, Vander Borgh said.

“We don’t have the data to say if they are more common,” he said.

Mina Shehee, of the North Carolina Division of Public Health, said after Backer’s talk she wonders if small farmers raising livestock are losing more animals than they realize to toxins produced by algal blooms.

She’s heard reports of animals dying for unknown reasons, she said, and wonders if ponds with algae might sometimes be to blame.

“We don’t know the extent of it. They are out there but we’re not capturing it,” said Shehee, who works in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch the Division.

Microscopic photograph of chains of small organisms — When nutrients are plentiful and other conditions are right, microscopic algae, including Dolichospermum species, reproduce so profusely that they produce blooms that appear to coat ponds and other waters.

She and colleagues are considering partnering with North Carolina Cooperative Extension agents to collect more data on animal deaths coinciding with algal blooms to get a clearer picture, she said.

Linking human, animal and environment

Spreading the word on the rising risk from harmful algal blooms fits well with the goals of the One Health movement, which strives to increase awareness of ways that the health of people, animals and the environment overlap.

There is good evidence that pets have been sentinels to the presence of cyanotoxins.

While no human deaths have been linked to exposure to cyanobacteria in North Carolina, for instance, dogs have been made sick and may have perished from contact, according to state Department of Health and Human Services educational material on bloom threats.

“If water is stinky and green, people are not going to go into it. But a dog will,” Backer said.

Zach McKinney, a North Carolina State University graduate student in physiology attending the talk, said the general public is probably most in the dark about potential risks of harmful algae blooms.

While growing up in Pamlico County, he said, a member of the church his family attended had intense algae blooms strike ponds where he grew fish for profit. As the green slime spread, his fish were dying.

To help out, volunteers, including children, jumped into the water to scoop out the surviving fish to try to save them. That produced a lot of splashing and close contact with whatever the algae might have released into the air.

“No one considered the potential harm,” he said.

Editor’s note: Locations where state officials detected toxic microcystins in 2016 were added to this story on April 22.

Feral swine often forage alongside livestock and eat grains, mineral blocks, and other nutrition sources intended for cattle. USDA APHIS photo / Justin Stevenson

When the Wild & Domesticated Collide

December 27, 2016 by Catherine Clabby

When the Wild & Domesticated Collide - North Carolina Health News

North Carolina has a surprising number of feral pigs roaming the countryside. They might be fun to hunt, but they’re not fun for farmers whose fields and livestock they damage.

This week, NC Health News brings you some of best stories of 2016. Enjoy!

By Catherine Clabby

In a hushed conference room in the heart of Research Triangle Park, a veterinary scientist urged college students to picture what might go wrong when the wild and the tame collide.

Feral swine are not native to the United States but they thrive here. USDA APHIS photo / Laurie Paulik. — Feral swine are not native to the U.S. They are the result of recent and historical (1500s Spanish explorers) releases of domestic swine and Eurasian boar. USDA APHIS photo by Laurie Paulik

To focus their thinking, NC State University professor Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf shared a sobering scenario that could occur in North Carolina. It went like this:

Hungry wild pigs burst through a fence confining livestock on a small farm, as they do frequently on the coast, in the mountains and in between. Once through, the intruders push domestic pigs aside to gorge on pasture grass or feed – anything edible they find, including young animals.

Seeing the damage the next day, a farmer recognizes feral swine breached his land. That isn’t a giant surprise because populations of the animals have exploded in the Southeast.

But he never considers what the intruders might have carried in.

That remains true weeks later when a sow on his farm delivers a litter of stillbirth piglets, disappointing a 10-year-old boy assisting his uncle during a Thanksgiving visit. The farmer assumes bad luck was in play.

As Christmas approaches, the nephew gets sick at his home on the outskirts of a city. At first, his family suspects flu. But after a punishing headache and pain in his neck flare, doctors fear lethal meningitis is in play and scramble to find a cause.

No one, at least not right away, suspects the bacteria Brucella suis, which jumps from wild pigs and can kill piglets and cause a potentially serious illness called brucellosis in people.

“Nobody is thinking about that, so it takes a long time for the people involved to recognize what the problem was,” Kennedy-Stoskopf said.

To try to shift such thinking, the College of Veterinary Medicine professor collaborates with others in her field, along with physicians, veterinarians and researchers specialized in environmental, plant and wildlife topics. Members of the North Carolina One Health Collaborative, they work to increase awareness of ways that the health of people, animals and the environment overlap.

Last week, they held the latest of a series of discussion sessions, open to the public that they host between January and April at the N.C. Biotechnology Center in RTP.

Nonfiction

People must take steps to preserve health across species, One Health enthusiasts argue, because we will always have close contact with animals. That’s likely more than ever as our global population continues to swell.

In addition, our species has always depended on animals for food. For millennia, we have sought their companionship as well.

Some critters, from tiny ticks carrying Lyme disease to the still-unknown animal host of Ebola, are existing threats. Most emerging infectious diseases worldwide today pass between humans and animals, and most of those originate in wildlife. As climate changes push animals out of longtime habitats, they may bring old diseases to new territories.

And as the menacing Zika virus is teaching the world right now, once it gets a foothold, a pathogen can expand its territory fast.

Wildlife isn’t the only sector of concern. Routine use of antibiotics at U.S. livestock facilities, for instance, that produces antibiotic-resistant germs is another example of an emerging illness link. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention has tied one in five cases of illnesses caused by treatment-resistant germs to direct exposure on such farms or to food made there.

Feral swine are prolific breeders. Sows have approximately 1 1/2 litters per year with each litter averaging 5 to 6 piglets. Females can become sexually mature at 6 to 8 months of age. — Feral swine are prolific breeders. Sows have approximately one and a half litters per year with each litter averaging five to six piglets. Females can become sexually mature at 6 to 8 months of age. USDA APHIS photo by Justin Stevenson

The pig-to-human-sickness scenario shared with students last week in RTP was modeled on a real-life case in South Carolina. (The mystery was solved and the boy got well.) But it could occur here.

Kennedy-Stoskopf was co-author of a 2012 scientific report showing that feral pigs tested at an environmental education center in Johnston County had been exposed to B. suis. The news caught the attention of multiple interest groups in a state where 2,300 farms raise nearly 9.6  million  hogs valued at $1.8  billion.

No one wants a Brucella species disrupting North Carolina’s hog industry.

At the discussion session, a mix of undergraduate and graduate students learned fast that preventing health problems linked to wildlife is not always simple. For example, it’s tough to control feral pigs, descendants of a mix of wild boar imported to this region for hunting, onetime farm animals and wild pigs brought here to stock hunting grounds.

Ironically, traits people bred into the their domestic ancestors long ago help wild pigs thrive in the wild today. Adaptable and robust, they reach sexual maturity young, can reproduce multiple times a year and have large litters. All of that helped them expand their territory from 17 to 39 U.S. states in recent decades.

The animals also carry many more pathogens than Brucella suis. Their groupings of multiple females and juveniles, called sounders, also damage crops, kill young livestock, damage native plants and muck up streams. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates damages at $1.5 billion a year.

Too many to count

“Is there a way to stop them from reproducing?” César Baëta, a master’s degree student in physiology at NC State asked optimistically at the One Health meeting. The answer, most emphatically on large populations scale, is no.

Feral pigs are considered invasive species in every state where they’ve been detected. An estimated population of 6 million produces damages totaling $1.5 billion in damage each year, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With Texas A & M University and the Noble Foundation, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services have tested the effectiveness of drop nets for capturing feral swine. USDA APHIS photo / Tyler Campbell. — With Texas A & M University and the Noble Foundation, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services have tested the effectiveness of drop nets for capturing feral swine. USDA APHIS photo by Tyler Campbell

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission doesn’t know how many feral pigs live within this state’s borders, said David Sawyer, section manager of its research and surveys division. But the commission knows their numbers have grown and considers them nuisances.

In recent years, state officials have given hunters wide rein to take the animals.

A licensed hunter can stalk them day or night, anytime of the year, with no bag limit. Electronic calls that lure the animals are allowed.

In 2015, the USDA committed $20 million a year to reduce or eliminate populations of feral swine in multiple states. That agency is spending about $380,000 a year in North Carolina.

Field staff here use thermal scopes or whatever else helps to find, trap where possible and shoot dead as many feral pigs as they can find. Carcasses get checked for disease-causing microorganisms, especially those that cause diseases that worry pork producers: swine brucellosis, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, swine influenza and pseudorabies.

A lot of the effort so far has focused in Currituck County in the northeast and Avery and Mitchell counties out west. But Keith Wehner, director of the USDA wildlife service in North Carolina, knows they and the wildlife commission, who they collaborate with, will find wild pigs in many places in between. (See map.)

Wehner said he hopes his staff one day will receive an exemption from state policy forbidding the shooting of animals from the air. That would allow trained staff to board agile helicopters to spy and destroy animals from above.

“We’re using every tool we can find,” Wehner said. “Our job is control, not sport. When a landowner agrees to let us on property, we kill every single pig.”

But can such a quick-to-reproduce animal be eliminated from the wild?

“Getting to that is the long-term goal,” Wehner said.

Additional Thanks

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