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A man arrived at a hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, with peculiar symptoms and an even stranger story. He was suffering from fever, cough, nausea, pain, and a bitter metallic taste in his mouth, but he already had an idea of who the culprit might be, and it was a doozy: a zoanthid coral.
[...]
relative had transferred 70 pounds of live zoanthid coral from a plastic container into the patient's 200 gallon aquarium inside his 1,600-square-foot mobile home.
[...]
some pieces of the coral fell on the floor, and some live polyps broke off.
Two people were sleeping in a room next door. The man who later showed up in the ER got home later and slept for seven hours in the same room as the aquarium.
All through the night -- and let me emphasize that you just can't make this stuff up -- the coral seems to have exuded some sort of creeping death mist. According to the CDC's venerable Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, “Patients A and C noted a visible mist and sensed humidity in the mobile home on the morning after coral introduction, leading them to suspect a possible problem with the aquarium.”
The next morning, all three people awoke with a nasty suite of neurologic, breathing, and muscle problems. The man who'd slept in the room with the aquarium was worst off. His fever had reached 103°F and his white blood cell count was elevated. He spent two days in the hospital before recovering.
A man arrived at a hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, with peculiar symptoms and an even stranger story. He was suffering from fever, cough, nausea, pain, and a bitter metallic taste in his mouth, but he already had an idea of who the culprit might be, and it was a doozy: a zoanthid coral.
[...]
relative had transferred 70 pounds of live zoanthid coral from a plastic container into the patient's 200 gallon aquarium inside his 1,600-square-foot mobile home.
[...]
some pieces of the coral fell on the floor, and some live polyps broke off.
Two people were sleeping in a room next door. The man who later showed up in the ER got home later and slept for seven hours in the same room as the aquarium.
All through the night -- and let me emphasize that you just can't make this stuff up -- the coral seems to have exuded some sort of creeping death mist. According to the CDC's venerable Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, “Patients A and C noted a visible mist and sensed humidity in the mobile home on the morning after coral introduction, leading them to suspect a possible problem with the aquarium.”
The next morning, all three people awoke with a nasty suite of neurologic, breathing, and muscle problems. The man who'd slept in the room with the aquarium was worst off. His fever had reached 103°F and his white blood cell count was elevated. He spent two days in the hospital before recovering.
