[lukeschaefer]

10 cases in several years, and "in all of the cases, the people had some sort of immune-compromising condition, mostly cancer, but also solid organ transplant and HIV. This likely put them at higher risk for infection and severe outcomes."

So yes, use distilled water... but in terms of risk factor, I don't think it's too high.

[DougN7]

I don’t get it. Doesn’t this “dangerous” tap water get in our eyes, mouths, nostrils (at least as steam or spray) every single day when we shower? I’m having a hard time getting too worried about this.

[snakeyjake]

The nose has the olfactory epithelium, and the eyes and mouth do not.

The olfactory epithelium allows external substances deeper into the body tissue than other boundaries in order to enable the sense of smell.

You can inhale (or be exposed by a wound in the skin) a single droplet of water containing Acanthamoeba and get sick and die. That would be a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

You can drink 10,000 liters of water full of it and never get sick, it rides down the slip-and-slide of your throat into your stomach where your stomach acid destroys it. It is likely that half of all people in the United States drank some today.

Several types of bacteria are like this, like staph and legionella, you can eat and drink them but the second they get in your nose or lungs (or blood via a cut or scrape): no bueno.

Unless, like the article suggests, you have an immune-compromising condition you have very little to be afraid of.

Just don't go swimming in warm stagnant water no matter how healthy you are.

[DougN7]

Thank you for the explanation - I appreciate it. But I still don’t understand - if just a single droplet can do kill, and half of American’s probably drank some, why aren’t we dropping dead from droplets getting into our nose during showers? There is either way, way less of this stuff in our drinking water, or some other protection in the nose. Or … ?

[gnicholas]

It wasn't clear from the article if there were only 10 cases during this time, or if they only looked at 10 cases, but there were more during this period. Kind of an important detail!

[el_benhameen]

Yeah, I think this was just a sample. There’s no mention of naegleria fowleri[0], which will definitely kill you even if you’re healthy. Wikipedia cites nasal irrigation as the source for about 9% of infections. Still not super high risk, but still a risk that I’ll happily avoid.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri

[rumblestrut]

This is just propaganda put out by Big Distilled Water.

They’ll never get my $0.99!

/s