Josh Roberts (decadence) palytoxin

[DuffyGeos]

Wow just got back in town and reading this. I wish the best to him and his family.

 

So now as I get ready to open up a few containers of "once live rock" that have been sitting in my basement I am wondering how to handle them. I was going to take them outside, pressure wash them, then put them in a trashcan of muriatic acid and water mix while keeping a pump on them. Next would be a rinse, then I think a bath of Lanthanum chloride and water mix....

 

I suppose I need to wear a face shield, gloves and respirator?

[jjenkins211]

He finally went home early this morning. He is still stiff and has a cough but is in much better shape than when he first went in. Thanks for all the prayers guys!

[DuffyGeos]

He finally went home early this morning. He is still stiff and has a cough but is in much better shape than when he first went in. Thanks for all the prayers guys!

 

Glad to hear it.

[Origami]

Wow just got back in town and reading this. I wish the best to him and his family.

 

So now as I get ready to open up a few containers of "once live rock" that have been sitting in my basement I am wondering how to handle them. I was going to take them outside, pressure wash them, then put them in a trashcan of muriatic acid and water mix while keeping a pump on them. Next would be a rinse, then I think a bath of Lanthanum chloride and water mix....

 

I suppose I need to wear a face shield, gloves and respirator?

After a few exposures to what I like to call Outlaw Palys, I finally reported to a face shield, shoulder length gloves, and an organic pesticide-type respirator when aggressively handling them. I also made sure the area I was in was well ventilated and that nobody else was nearby. It may have been overkill, but I didn't suffer again.

 

For me, the symptoms of exposure hit about 3 hours after exposure and lasted around 12 hours or so. Sometimes I feel that my lung capacity today (years after) is not what it was before exposure but that may be imagined. I don't know.

 

Josh, I hope that you're back to 100% real soon.

[mogurnda]

Wow, very scary.  Best wishes for him and the family to recover.

[L8 2 RISE]

Wow, late seeing this, but praying for them and a quick recovery!

 

These are scary, I've had the same experience as Origami, hit me 3-4 hours after exposure while I was driving- I was freezing so turned up the heat all the way at the same time I realized I was having trouble breathing but attributed it to being so cold.  When I finally got home and out of the car I started shivering uncontrollably but it was 90 degrees out so I realized something was very wrong.

 

 It was a rough night for me so I can't imagine how Josh has been feeling.  I'm glad he got to help and hope they were able to provide him with some pretty powerful drugs for the discomfort.

[miggs76]

Is this type of danger attributed just to palys or are zoas included?

[AlanM]

I've read before that all of them have at least small amounts of it, but don't remember the reference.  Hope Josh gets better soon and doesn't have lasting consequences for this exposure.  How long do the health effects typically last?  Tom says he thinks he can detect them even now.  Anyone know if Steveoutlaw still has effects from it?

[Origami]

I've read before that all of them have at least small amounts of it, but don't remember the reference.  Hope Josh gets better soon and doesn't have lasting consequences for this exposure.  How long do the health effects typically last?  Tom says he thinks he can detect them even now.  Anyone know if Steveoutlaw still has effects from it?

The severe symptoms, for me, passed in 8 to 12 hours typically. The tightness in the chest and the "breathy / wheezy" feeling could hang on a little longer. A trace of that wheezy feeling is what I'll get from time to time. Admittedly, that can be caused by a lot of things, so (today) it's probably not related to long-term effects, but it still provokes my memory enough to make me wonder at times. 

 

I don't know if Steve feels similarly. I'll send him a note and see if he might want to weigh in.

[DuffyGeos]

The severe symptoms, for me, passed in 8 to 12 hours typically. The tightness in the chest and the "breathy / wheezy" feeling could hang on a little longer. A trace of that wheezy feeling is what I'll get from time to time. Admittedly, that can be caused by a lot of things, so (today) it's probably not related to long-term effects, but it still provokes my memory enough to make me wonder at times. 

 

I don't know if Steve feels similarly. I'll send him a note and see if he might want to weigh in.

 

I just emailed Steve to let him know what happened and that his name came up. He is traveling a lot for work and doesn't looks at the boards much so I told him he could just email be back and I would post it if he was busy, but I didn't want to put any words in his mouth. He was at my house about 2 months ago to check out what I was doing with my build and to pass on some sage advice.

[TrueTricia]

Wow.  I didn't look much at the board over the weekend.  I'm so happy to hear that Josh and his family are ok.  What a scary experience.

 

I've handled my palys before, and while I've experienced a minor tingling on my fingertips, I haven't had anything nearly this severe.  But I definitely feel like I never want to buy another paly again!  It's amazing and scary how nature can protect itself. 

[Origami]

This thread may be of interest as it collects some of our shared experiences and references other threads. In my case, I forgot about the 104 degree fever the first time I was exposed and the wheeziness was downplayed while the shivering was obviously memorable.

[steveoutlaw]

Glad to hear he's ok.  No one should try to make Outlaw stew.....it never turns out well.

 

When I got exposed I had the same thing as described above; symptoms hit about 3-4 hours after exposure, coughing, wheezing, lungs collapsed.  Mine was a bad exposure and I had to spend the night in the hospital on a respirator and 5 months on a steroid inhaler.  To this day I still get horrible coughs that causes a lot of chest pain.

 

The CDC came out to look at mine and test them after they heard what happened to me.  According to their studies, ANY agitation of palythoas or zoanthids (both contain toxin, the type and amount can vary) causes them to release the toxin as a defense mechanism.  It can become airborne by being aerosolized like my soup making experiment, or in water vapor from evaporation which sounds like what happened here.  Either way this is nasty stuff.  I've had people contact me about losing sight in their eye after being squirted, having numbness and swelling from handling without gloves, muscle and joint pain from contact with an open sore, and pets dying from licking/eating them.  With what I'm still suffering today, I recommend to anyone that they get rid of them.  You can be as careful as you want, but all it takes is one accident.

 

BTW - The worst part of my experience as I'm laying in the hospital gasping for air, is when the doctor said "Sorry, but I just don't know how to treat this".  There is no antidote and the only way they can treat it is "best guess".  Not a situation you want to be in.

[turbo2oh]

Its concerning how many people have had an issue with these considering this this club isn't a huge population. Making me second guess adding any more zoas to my tank.

[Origami]

Its concerning how many people have had an issue with these considering this this club isn't a huge population. Making me second guess adding any more zoas to my tank.

I think that DC probably has a higher than normal number of tanks that have had this rather plain-looking paly in it. They can be difficult to get rid of and spread readily. I'm pretty sure that I even saw a few in a local fish store several years back. That place is out of business now. But it just goes to show you that they can show up anywhere around here.

[turbo2oh]

I think that DC probably has a higher than normal number of tanks that have had this rather plain-looking paly in it. They can be difficult to get rid of and spread readily. I'm pretty sure that I even saw a few in a local fish store several years back. That place is out of business now. But it just goes to show you that they can show up anywhere around here.

 

Isn't this same toxin present in all zoas/palys? 

[Origami]

Isn't this same toxin present in all zoas/palys? 

As Steve said above, it's present in varying levels. There are also papers written that reference Steve's case that indicate as much.

[Origami]

Steve's post on RC is here.
 
A very good scientific article ("Palytoxin Found in Palythoa sp. Zoanthids (Anthozoa, Hexacorallia) Sold in the Home Aquarium Trade") is located here.

 

Wikipedia entry on palytoxin is here.

[BowieReefer84]

I refer to them as Texas Trash Paly's.

[Sharkey18]

I have a lot of plays and zoas and one of the things I do is NEVER work with them OUT of the water.

 

I even frag them in a low dish of tank water, always completely covered with several inches of water. This does not eliminate the risk of exposure but it means that the chance of aerolsolization, or squirting into my eye is much more limited. Gloves and a face mask is also a great idea. 

 

I want to make sure any toxin they release stays in the water and has little to no chance to enter the air. 

[jjenkins211]

Yah when josh saw the doctor treating

Him she told him all she knew about it was what she read on Google and Wikipedia. She also said she had no clue what to do or how to treat it and all she can do is treat the symptoms. He also had the CDC come in and talk to him about the exposure. He told me the pump he was using was a mesh modded skimmer pump that aerosoled the toxin. I'll let him know about this thread so he can put his input in. Thanks for all your concern and prayers.

[YHSublime]

I have to think that it is a certain type of paly or zoa that would contain more palythoa than the others. For example, the Steve Outlaw Palys vs. Utter Chaos. I don't have science behind this, just speculating.

 

Admitedly, I am cavalier with my cutting. I usually do so without gloves, or eyeglasses, but I take caution to keep the zoas far from my face. After one instance, I will use reading glasses, and that is when I had a zoa squirt while I was cutting. This is by NO way best practice, so do as I say, not as a I do to those paying attention. I have never fragged palys other than what I have labeled as "mindblowers," but I guess Steve said it best, he never thought it would happen to him, and then one day it did.

[Rburgee]

Wish them the best on their recovery.

[cjeffers88]

Hey you guys just saw this thread decided to check in. I'll let you know my side before Josh comes in with all his here's my science talk LOL. Basically what happened was we are in the process of Setting up our fish in the office. We had been looking for cheap live rich and we found some. The LRvcame in 3- 5gallon buckets, no heater no pumps etc. The buckets had lids and we didn't know that they had any palys on them there were some stony coral but that's it. They looked fine for about a day or two when Josh decided to start cycling them in the 75. We were working late at the shop and my sons nursery is right above the office so he and I went to bed around midnight. Josh stayed up working on the fish tanks.

Next thing I know my son and I are fighting sleep and waking up chest supertight I'm coughing and having labored breathing. I wake Josh up and tell him something is wrong, that we keep coughing and I'm having trouble breathing. I'm looking around to see what caused the issues, and eyes notice the AC unit was turned on. It's an older unit so I thought maybe something was wrong with it so I turned it off. And googled coughing and old AC units. Searches came up that talked about mold, so I thought maybe it was mold getting into our lungs. Josh still had a little fan circulating air so I thought we would be fine, I got my son back to sleep and then I drifted off. Josh was already back asleep at this time. Then a couple hours later I woke up to coughing again and saw that my son was coughing. He was still asleep but he was coughing and asleep, then woke up and I tried to nurse him but it'll seem to hurt him to swallow. But once again he drifted off. I also drifted off and the next thing I know I'm being woken up by joshes alarm. I stand up and I feel super nauseous, I run downstairs to the bathroom and I end up getting sick. On my way back up I noticed the tanks, as we all know they aren't really small. I saw that the rocks were in the tanks. So I walked upstairs and told Josh I have just gotten really sick this is not good. He then responded saying really, Porsche (dog) got sick earlier. That's when I brought up the rocks, I asked him when he put the rocks in the tank. The lightbulb went off and Josh said oh *&#@. He ran downstairs turned off everything open the windows, and I was busy upstairs packing uo the diaper bag. We got downstairs and I told him to tell everyone not to come in. And we left. Everything seemed better once we got some fresh air in our lungs. But as we were driving home I kept getting more nervous because Nikola was breathing really heavy and having trouble and coughing. I decided I'm going to take him to the ER. Josh fight with me about going to the ER himself, so I said F it stay home with Porsche. I even gave him the option to take her to the vet or have someone we know take her to the vet. But he stubborn so he stayed home with her. I rushed my son and I to the Howard County General Hospital emergency room and I had him seen first.

 

The number of times I had to explain Palytoxin poisoning was annoying, but I told them the best option was to get a hold of poison control. Nikola had blood drawn and it IV put into him he had a slight fever, so they gave him Tylenol. Throughout this whole check in my symptoms kept getting worse. I had talked to josh and the body chills were super excessive. I had similar chills and aches, To the point when they want to give him chest x-rays I could barely walk along with them. When they tried to put the chest protector on me I couldn't really stand and I told the nurses I can't do this I'm not strong enough, so the nurses had to do the x-rays with my son while I waited outside. Throughout this whole time I had been texting and talking with Josh but he had stopped responding. Which worried me because my symptoms were awful and I knew his had to be worse since he actually handled the rocks. I kept calling and texting him and since he wouldn't respond.. I decided to hit up anyone close to the house to check in on him, including justin. Since Justin knew the severity of the ordeal he got his sister and mom to stop by. My friend Anita was down the street and got there first. Right before she got to the door, josh picked up his phone. Sigh of relief I told him people were coming to check on him, to which he replied he was fine. Anita called me and said he says he's fine etc.. But I. Reality he looked like death and was so weak. I told Anita he needed to go to the hospital, that he's just fighting it and putting on an act. Justin's sister and mom arrived and they saw how "pathetic" Porsche looked. They called more family etc. we tried avoiding this but since josh stopped responding I couldn't hide it. I called his brother and asked him to convince to take josh to the hospital and Porsche to the vet. I told him I haven't told Josh's mother yet.. Trying not to scare her, they were out of town in Ohio. Well Justin's mom texted her right before Josh's brother called her and we called it. She was worried, scared, frantic, and thinking the worst. One of the other people I had texted was Josh's good friend Dave. His father is a zoologist, so he asked his dad about palytoxin and his dad said hospital now. Dave drove over and showed up 5-10 mins after everyone got there. Dave pretty much had to physically carry josh to the hospital because josh was so weak. Justin's sister and mom took Porsche to the vet, and Anita, Dave and Josh went to HCGH ER.

 

In the meanwhile, my phone is blowin up from texts giving me this play by play... I called my parents to help watch Nikola in PICU while I got admitted to the ER myself. I was dizzy, disoriented, killer headache, labored and painful breathing, extreme weakness, body chills and aches, and a fever of 100.3. My bp was extremely low but I have low bp to start. I came at a good time, they took me to a room and got blood samples and gave me and IV and saline bag for fluids.

I was notified that they wanted to take my son to Johns Hopkins because the pediatrics unit at HCGH didn't feel that they had anyone truly qualified. His white blood cell count was extremely high! So I signed the papers and gave the ok for them to transfer my little baby boy with my dad. I felt better knowing my dad was going with him.

 

Josh had finally gotten to the ER and they took his stats. 103.5 temp, super high then super low bp, crazy heart rate etc. so they laid him on a gurney .. For about an hour until a room was available. Family members from both sides show up worries. We knew word had spread and another hospital visit for Chelsea was being passed around only this time it included Nikola and Josh.

 

In the background another woman was screaming help and sounded like a billy goat. Yelling that the doctors and nurses are kidnapping her, good entertainment while I just laid in my room. They pretty much forgot about me. My headache started becoming way too much. Finally a doctor came in. Parts of my body started tingling uncontrollably and I told the nurse that according to my blood work, my potassium levels were very low, she said that's why my body is tingling. So they ordered me a giant horse pill of potassium, and had to cut it in half for me to swallow the pieces. An hour went by and the tingling was still there. The headache would disappear and come back soften that hit harder. So I finally called the nurse and they put me on oxygen and called up for Tylenol. I had to continuously take the oxygen out of my nose because it kept burning, and I told nurses it burned, but they didn't do anything about it. I got the Tylenol and it helped my headache for a little bit but that was all. I was able to walk around and Josh finally got a room I was able to visit him. They had me give a urine sample just to make surefor extra tests and they said I came back with nothing wrong. They said they talked with poison control and I just have to wait out the symptoms, and that they were going to discharge me.

 

My dad had called and said the nurses at Hopkins love him and Nikola is doing better, and says there's not much to do but alone not that much information on it, that he basically has the symptoms of a chest infection and that they were going to discharge him as well. That actually pissed me off quite a bit since they were supposed to call me to ask me questions about what happened but they never did. They discharge my sign and said it is likely Nikola wasn't even exposed which makes no sense, since we all were.

we were both discharged Friday night and we visited Josh and his ER room before my son and I left to go get cleaned up wash stop and take a nap. I didn't want him to be in the ER for a lot of sick people were. Josh later that night was sent to a room for overnights an observation. Josh's parents finally got to the hospital around 9 PM that night.

 

Josh was forced to stay until his white blood cell count finally came down to a normal range which it did Sunday morning. They kept giving him random medications throughout his day and would constantly ignore what he would tell them. Thankfully we are all home now doing a lot better.

We all still suffer from the side effects Nikola is doing a lot better, you can only tell when he cries or scream, his throat is so sore. I still have a massive headaches a cough trouble breathing but my tingling is gone. Josh says he probably has 50% of his lung strength back, he still coughing and we all get exhausted very easily. We are all back at work though working hard. No time for rest LOL.

 

There's tons more but that's a summary on my side.

[DuffyGeos]

Thanks for sharing your ordeal.  I hope everyone recovers quickly.