Naegleria

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.Gizmodo’s Top Five Gadgets of 2023A 16-month-old boy was playing in a splash pad at a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, this summer when water containing a very rare and deadly brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He died a few days later in the hospital. The toddler wasn’t the first person in the United States to contract the freshwater amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, this year. In February, a man in Florida died after rinsing his…

Photo: nikkytok (Shutterstock)Florida health officials say a man recently died from a brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria fowleri—an infection likely caught from rinsing his sinuses with tap water. These infections are incredibly rare but almost always lethal, and they have been previously linked to nasal rinsing, such as through the use of neti pots. As a result, it’s recommended that people only use sterile or recently boiled water when performing this activity.In late February, the Florida Department of Health in…