Deadly Dung - Page 1

This is scary to me because I have raised 4 or more baby coons, in my home sometimes along with my children.  My husband just called me 2 minutes ago, as he found a baby coon and wondered if I wanted to foster it. 

http://whyfiles.org/086urban_critter/3.html

The larvae burrow into your brain. Then you die.
When parasite expert Kevin Kazacos looked into a die-off at a chicken farm in Indiana in 1979, he found it "dramatic, so pathogenic, it looked like nothing I'd dealt with before." The birds showed signs of central-nervous system disorders -- problems with walking and standing, and the death rate was staggering -- 622 birds died in seven weeks.

The next year, he saw similar symptoms in quail housed in a pen formerly used by pet raccoons. As similar cases came to his attention, Kazacos, a professor of veterinary parasitology at Purdue University, pinned the blame on larvae of Baylisascaris procyonis, a roundworm parasite of raccoons that had been identified in the 1940s.

Kazacos has since found the parasite larvae in 75 species of animals, including dogs, foxes, kangaroos, 26 types of rodent, and 23 kinds of bird. These animals lived in zoos, labs, homes and the wild.

In 1980, he saw the first confirmed human death, a Pennsylvania boy who apparently had eaten feces from raccoons living in the family's chimney. Like the birds, the boy had neurological problems and trouble controlling his muscles. The autopsy showed roundworm larvae in his brain.

Baylisascaris procyonis is a zoonotic parasite, meaning that humans can catch it from animals. Well-known zoonotic diseases include rabies, transmitted by the bite of an infected mammal, hantavirus, carried by deer mice, and Lyme disease, carried by deer ticks.

Microscopic urban menace
To the public, zoonotic diseases are a little-recognized hazard posed by animals around us. While deer threaten our vegetation and cats waste our birds, zoonotic diseases head directly for us. And because raccoons are more common in cities and suburbs than in rural areas, they (and their zoonotic diseases) represent some of the more dangerous urban wildlife.

To date, 10 children, and one adult, have come down with fatal or severe neurological disease from B. procyonis. Children are stricken more commonly due to their habit of "geophagia" (the exquisite scientific term for eating dirt), and generally cramming stuff in their mouths.

Most people don't develop symptoms. But if you eat enough microscopic eggs of B. procyonis, it can be hazardous to your health. "Children can lose the ability to sit up, to hold their heads up, to use their hands or feed themselves," Kazacos says.

Generally, by the time the disease is recognized, the larvae have already started burrowing through the brain, so it's too late to prevent damage. But in animal colonies where B. procyonis was known to be present, quick drug treatment of new infections did limit the damage.

The human disease is rare enough that it's seldom diagnosed until more common causes of neurological disorder have been ruled out, by which time, severe or fatal neurological damage m

Wildlife waste can carry a variety of pathogens that can cause serious illness, including death, in humans: hanta virus in the dust from mouse and rat droppings, and baylisascaris in raccoon droppings are but two of these.  One should always wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, rubber or nitrile gloves, a good-quality dust mask that's properly fitted and eye protection when doing anything in areas where wildlife droppings may have accumulated and you're going to be stirring up dust and debris.

can these be killed by the same meds used for regular worming?