A rare but deadly brain-eating amoeba has infected a U.S. drinking water supply for the first time, officials said Monday, in St. Bernard Parish southeast of New Orleans. The parasite Naegleria fowleri has been blamed for the deaths of a 4-year-old in Mississippi who probably got it playing on a Slip 'N Slide and of a 13-year-old Miami boy last month. The amoeba is usually harmless unless it gets up someone's nose, in which case it can attach to nerves and produce fatal swelling and infection. “We have never seen Naegleria colonizing a treated water supply before,” the head of water safety for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. “From a U.S. perspective this is a unique situation.” He said the bug becomes more dangerous further from water treatment plant, where disinfectant levels in warm water are relatively low. That is likely what happened in St. Bernard Parish, he said.
