The city of Toledo and nearby communities have earned the dubious distinction of being the first to report outbreaks of human illness due to algae toxins in municipal drinking water, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Both areas take their drinking water from Lake Erie.
Not to mention they can cause dead zones in bodies of water, killing marine life.
In September 2013, microcystin toxin was detected in the water treatment facility for Carroll Township, Ohio, at 3.5 times the safety threshold for drinking water.
This time around, 110 people got sick, and almost half a million people had to quit drinking tap water until they got the all clear.
It’s too early to know whether drinking water problems due to algae are becoming more common, says Jonathan Yoder, a CDC epidemiologist and one of the report’s authors.
"The bottom line is that we can’t say whether they are increasing or not, we know that the conditions that lead to algal blooms — nutrient pollution and warm water — are present in these freshwater lakes," Yoder says.
"I think there’s a continual risk in some of these areas for algal blooms and for some of them to be the type that have toxins that cause human illness."
Kathy Benedict, lead author of the paper and an epidemiologist with the CDC’s Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch, points out that the cases in Ohio in 2013 and 2014 were not necessarily the first — they were just the first to be reported.
The CDC report, which was published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found than in 2013-2014, 42 outbreaks were reported in 19 states, resulting in 1,006 illnesses and 13 deaths.