Leaf Blowers and zoonosis

The recent happening of Legionnaire’s respiratory disorder in Flint Michigan and its link in time and house to metal contamination of the general public installation  (lead and iron) teaches North American country, once again, that we tend to board Associate in Nursing interconnected setting. Change one thing and multiple consequences can accrue.     

The complicated chain of cause and result, as we tend to ar learning from the development Michigan debacle, will embrace each cytotoxic pollutants and infectious agents. now was brought home to me by a totally unrelated report that surfaced just a public attention was being drawn north to the good Lakes State (one of whose other nicknames is that the “Water Wonderland”). It turns out that farther to the West, another outbreak has been occurring. In Dec, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that a different human disease was on the upswing. Called tularemia, this infection can be every bit as dangerous as Legionella, and then some (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6447a4.htm (link is external)). “Upswing,” in fact, could minimise the trend. Compared to the ten years before twelvemonth 2015, the amount of cases of zoonosis being reported  in Colorado, Nebraska, American state and Wyoming was up 975%, 200%, 186% and 700%, respectively. The hundred cases in total subsumed by this outbreak are roughly on the scale of the Legionella surge in and around Flint.    

Tularemia is a bacterial infection that humans pick up from the environment: it can cause pneumonia, swollen glands, and also a general illness marked by fever and pain (not reassuringly, this is referred to as a “typhoidal” form of the disease).  It doesn’t take much exposure, either. Indeed, this infectious agent has been considered a potential bioterror threat precisely because of its virulence. In its report on the multi-state tularemia outbreak, the CDC was cautious to note that its cause was unclear and that possible factors included “increased rainfall promoting vegetation growth, pathogen survival, and increased rodent and rabbit populations.”

Exposure to rabbits, in particular, has long been known to be an important potential tularemia exposure scenario especially among hunters, giving the disease one of its common monikers: “rabbit fever.” Just over half of the new outbreak cases reported an animal contact of some sort. An additional one third reported insect bites - historically, deer fly bites have been another well recognized vector of transmission.  But what was really noteworthy among the 100 new cases was that 49 of them reported “environmental aerosolizing activities.”  One assumes this must have been put in other words by the patients themselves. Examples the CDC gives for sources of “aerosolization” include “landscaping, mowing over voles, hares or rodents, or other farming activities.”

The brevity of this laundry list of outside aerosol no-no’s was assuasive. After all, most people don’t mow over voles habitually. Still, i used to be intrigued by the obscure respect to “landscaping.” Did this MEan manning Associate in Nursing earthmover or just unimportant within the garden? to a small degree excavation of my very own light-emitting diode me to analysis that had been administrated on a virus of tularemia-caused respiratory disorder on Martha’s farm back within the year 2000. epidemiologic investigation showed that skilled landscapers there have been thirty two times additional possible than others on the island to come back down with the infection. This observation spurred on an equivalent investigatory team to try and do a follow-up study, this time targeting landscapers in detail in order to tease out specific work-related risk factors that accounted for their exposure. The single most potent activity leading to infection was use of a power blower (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12643831 (link is external)).

Ever since its relatively recent introduction, the motor-powered leaf blower had served as something of lightning rod. Although rarely in the literal sense, as in the case of a 38 year old Floridian reportedly struck when he climbed up on his roof leaf-blower in hand (http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-07-16/news/0007160241_1_roof-light... (link is external)), leaf blowers for the most part have galvanized opposition for the most part owing to pollution and noise.  A 2000 “Report to the CA law-makers on the Potential Health and Environmental Impacts of Leaf Blowers” stressed these problems, for instance, however mentioned not a word on the potential unfold of infection (http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/mailouts/msc0005/msc0005.pdf (link is external)).

Ten years later, a replacement Yorker profile on “the nice residential district leaf war” updated the contestation, however zoonosis remained unmentioned, apparently lost within the noise that's the foremost obvious leaf blower bone of rivalry (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/25/blowback (link is external)). The Martha’s farm epidemic was a decade previous by that time. however the chance of infection in landscapers has not gone away. The 2009 case of a 21-year previous in American state UN agency dropped with grave infectious disease from zoonosis underscores this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364939 (link is external)). His doctors initially were perplexed by the illness: “He had recently modified jobs and failed to at the start report that he had worked as an expert landscapist till seven days before the onset of symptoms. He had performed field mowing and leaf processing services and noted the he had seen dead rabbits within the areas within which he worked.”