Phiesteria Outbreak example essay topic

Phiesteria: The Unseen Killer An incredibly scary new type of algae is on the loose on the eastern seaboard of the United States and worst of all not many people know about it. Phiesteria - Latin for "fish killer" has been living in the mud of rivers for millions of years, but until recently something has jolted its metabolism into overdrive and has caused it to become a fearsome predator. This newly discovered type of dinoflagellate or marine protozoa, which generally has two flagella and cellulose covering, has been living off simple nutrients in the river waters of primarily North Carolina, until now that is. Near the Neuse River in NC, there is a slaughterhouse for pigs and chickens; all of the waste from the pigs is stored in massive lagoons where it is later sprayed onto crops as fertilizer. Unfortunately, a lot of this raw sewage ends up in streams that flow into the Neuse, which in turn enters the Pamlico Sound, a 2,000-mile long estuary in NC. This ultimately brings an immense amount of nutrients to the water thus causing the Phiesteria to shape-shift and enter a state of lethal attack on everything from fish to human.

The Center for Disease Control has yet to do anything about this at all, which may be the scariest fact so far. I learned about this ecological disaster while reading my newest edition (October 2001) of Maxim. As I was flipping through my new magazine I saw a horrifying picture of a fish; it looked as though something took a bite out of its neck. Interested, I continued to read, "The Coming Plague" by Jeff Wise. Basically, Maxim exposes the entire path of this deadly modern-day epidemic starting in 1987, when a veterinary graduate student at North Carolina State University, named Stephen Smith, originally found Phiesteria. Further into the article it tells about Phiesteria moving north into parts of Maryland and even going south as far as 1,000-miles to the coast of Florida and how not enough action is being done to stop this deadly organism.

The entire article is broken down into segmented stories of individual peoples fight with Phiesteria. I felt this article gave a great amount of information and helped to explain all of Phiesteria's facts. One of the most amazing things I learned while reading this article is that the organism can infect humans even if they don't come in direct contact with them, in fact, all we have to do is breath the air that is within a close proximity to where the organism is living. Some of the effects it has on us are memory loss, infections that never heal, and temporary of body parts and speech. "The Great Outdoors: Jitters About an Elusive Microbe" by G. Patrick Pauling was the second article I read, which was printed in the June 18th, 2000 edition of the New York Times. This article is based in New Jersey where a Phiesteria outbreak occurred killing hundreds of fish.

As soon as the state Department of Environmental Protection was called in people started to get angry. First the department came in wearing full bio hazard gear, which obviously does not let feelings settle easy with the inhabitants of the area. The second thing that angered the citizens is that for eight months the state said nothing about what they found. Finally a reporter from the Press of Atlantic City interviewed someone from the NJ State department and got a response out of them. In defense, the state argued that just as soon as they learned that Phiesteria had infected the water, hurricane Floyds' rain flushed the river completely clean thus eliminating the need for warning. This statement however did not fly with many of the residence in the southern New Jersey area; they believe that no matter what, people should have been warned.

This article covered only a single area of the outbreaks and provided less information about Phiesteria as a whole and deals more with the concerns of the people in the southern New Jersey area. The final location where I received information about this awful organism was at web The informative section of the web page tells all the raw facts known about Phiesteria at the present time. It starts with background information, how long the organism has been here, what caused it to become toxic, etc., it than goes onto the life cycles. Phiesteria has twenty-four flagellated, amoeboid, and encysted forms and can morph numerous times within a matter of a few hours. The final information page is about human impacts; it explains all of the symptoms on humans that the Phiesteria toxins can bring upon and how long they last.

Generally all symptoms were reversible provided the person did not come into contact with the toxin again; they also found that after strenuous work-outs the symptoms could resurface, meaning the toxin could remain dormant in the body for up to eight years after the original exposure. This entire web page provided all the information one could possibly want to learn about Phiesteria, it also gave you the opportunity to read research papers from other scientists around the US so you can view other people's opinions as well. Two of these sources (Maxim and the web site) were very informative, the NY Times article focused more on one small instance of the ecological problem and how the city reacted to it. I felt that Maxims article was by far the best; it was very well written and had great pictures in it showing all the stages of the Phiesteria morphing. I think what hooked me into this article more than the others was that it followed the life of the organism from its "birth" up until as recently as this spring. I believe something must be done soon in order to stop this from turning into an incredibly large outbreak of death and sickness.

"Phiesteria is a Level Three bio hazard. Ebola is a Four. AIDS is a Two". Said JoAnn Burkholder, one of the leading scientists fighting this organism. Not to mention that the organism can survive being submerged in sulfuric acid (Maxim). It seems as though the creature is getting stronger, just this spring near the mouth of the Neuse River a major outbreak occurred.

Every menhaden fish more than two inches long within a 20 square mile area of the river was killed. That is not even the worst part, seven bottle-nosed dolphins were also found dead on the beach perhaps the toxins were becoming more potent, enough to kill a mammal (Maxim). To me it seems obvious, this creature will continue to spread and multiply all along the eastern seaboard, theoretically it could move inland to other lakes if it happened to get in the right stream or river. Something must be done and it must be done soon.