Neti Pots Could Help Amoebas Eat Your Brains

I’ve always been suspicious of neti pots — those weird little teapots that people use to wash out their nasal passages. Now I have just cause: two Louisiana residents have died after they used tap water, rather than distilled, to rinse their noses. According to LiveScience, this treatment “a deadly amoeba living in the tap water, called Naegleria fowleri,” to get into their sinuses, at which point it ate their brains. The technical name for this brain-eating is primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, and it usually kills victims in mere days. A CDC epidemiologist says that the risk of getting your brain eaten from ordinary tap water use is low — but if you want to protect your brain from evil amoebas, you probably want to boil water before you snort it.