Ciguatoxin – Poisoned by a fish!
We bring you this article about ciguatoxin which we received this morning via one of our RSS feeds. We had not heard of any recent poisoning by ciguatoxin. So, in the interests of food safety please study the following report very carefully.
Robert Steiger, manager of Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park, was in the best shape of his life when he came down with ciguatera at the age of 35 in 1987 after eating barracuda he’d speared off Sebastian Inlet.
“It about killed me,” he said. “Within an hour, the symptoms started taking effect. When I got home, I got to the toilet and couldn’t get off.
“I ended up in the emergency room at Ormand Beach Memorial; they put me in a wheelchair, and I started going downhill fast. My blood pressure started to bottom out. I was going into cardiac arrest.”
Steiger was in intensive care for a week, during which he lost 20 pounds.
“Everything went straight through me,” he said. “I had reverse thermal sensation: In the shower, I’d put on steaming hot water, and it felt ice-cold. I had hallucinations. My hands and tongue tingled. It lasted a year.”
Unfortunately, there is no way to know whether fish contain ciguatoxin – some island communities reportedly use pets and elderly relatives to test fish.
“Ciguatoxin can affect people in really low concentrations, subparts per billion,” Parsons said. “So it’s difficult to detect.”
Gambierdiscus species appear worldwide in tropical and subtropical waters, including the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico; Florida’s hot spot has traditionally been the Keys.
“There is concern about Gambierdiscus range expansion with climate change,” Parsons said. “We’re detecting fish with ciguatoxin in the northern Gulf, and people are getting sick in the Canary Islands where they’ve never had it before.”
Another concern is fish from ciguatera areas.
“As we max out local fisheries, we’re importing more and more fish from the Pacific and Caribbean,” Parsons said. “So people are more exposed to tropical fish and the threat of ciguatera.”
Study’s scope
Early researchers thought there was only one Gambierdiscus species (G. toxicus); in recent years, 11 have been identified, four in the Keys.
“Some species do better in warm water, some in cold,” Parsons said. “Some are more toxic than others. Some are in the Caribbean but not the Pacific. Some are in the Pacific but not the Caribbean. Some are global.”
Bill & Sheila’s Food Safety – Bacterial Infections – ciguatoxin
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