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Just heard from a sleep tech that her sleep center, located within a  highly prestigious hospital in one of America's largest and most affluent metropolitan centers, fills patients humidifiers with tap water on CPAP titrations.  furthermore, a 7 year-old child contracted Legionnaires Disease and died from being titrated with a CPAP humidifier filled with tap water.

Make sure you insist on distilled or reverse osmosis/ purified bottled water for your CPAP titrations in the sleep center.  The life you save may be your own.

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Sherry, do you know why peroxide is a better choice than vinegar? Not saying it's the wrong thing to do but I had never heard of using peroxide for that purpose before. Interesting.

Let me put my $0.02 in. Here's a link to a chart for kitchen sanitizing: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/safefood/home/sanitize.pdf

Hopefully this will be able to put an end to all of the comparisons of the different sanitizers.

Gordon H

MZH said:

Sherry, do you know why peroxide is a better choice than vinegar? Not saying it's the wrong thing to do but I had never heard of using peroxide for that purpose before. Interesting.

I agree with you about not using boiled water and using distilled water. I just have a minor correction. Chlorine is removed when you boil water as free chlorine is a gas. I think you meant chloride compounds. We have a water softener, and if you boil the water you will get salt left in the pan (sodium chloride). We also use an activated charcoal filter to remove any free gases. Since the plumbing is copper, there shouldn't be any other metals.

If you live in a place where you have city water, most people I know use bottled water to avoid the situation of rust, lead, arsenic, and other metals which would be left behind from the water pipes. Again, if bromination or chlorination is used by the city, those gases are removed by boiling.

JanSaysHello said:

Boiling tap water may kill any bacteria or viruses but it also concentrates any contaminants such as chlorine, rust, lead etc.  Please don't use boiled water. Avoid breathing in those concentrated chemicals forced into your lungs all night.  Distilled water is the best water to use.
Jan

I can't stand the humidifier so I don't use it, although I do wake up with a dry mouth every morning. It feels like I'm being water-boarded or trying to breathe through a wet rag when I fill it. I'd rather just brush my teeth and swish a little water in my mouth in the morning than breathe wet air all night long( I feel the same about hot air, yuck!).. to each their own I suppose. When I have used it, I used Tap water, and after what I've seen left in the tank after its gone, I will use distilled in the future if I ever decide to start using it again. As someone stated above cleanliness is the key... I had gotten very lax on cleaning my cpap supplies until I got a quarter sized lesion on my nose from my equipment!

Mike, a hospital staff can't cover up the death of a 7 year old boy.

Mike said:

Paul R -- you assume the staff at the center didn't cover up their mistake well.  i would think just the opposite.  

Paul R said:

Mike, with all due respect, while your message is a good one, that yes, we should all be using distilled water, not tap, in our humidifier, i can't help but think your story is apocryphal.

Something like this would (should?) have been all over that center's local news and there would be no need to keep the name of this center anonymous. A 7 year old boy contracting Legionnaire's disease because the wrong type of water was used in a sleep study? Forget local news, this would have been national!

But like I said, your message is a good one and that one should be very careful about the quality of water one puts into his/her humidifier.

I've done a lot of digging, and suspect this story is an urban legend. My guess is that if Mike tried to track it back, he'd find the tech has no first-hand knowledge of the alleged death.

It's a hallmark of urban legends when they're told, they seem to be only one step removed from the source, but if investigated, the attribution keeps getting pushed back to someone else from whom the teller heard the story--the proverbial "friend of a friend."

While I don't think we need to fear tap water, or our sleep center, the reminder to clean and sanitize equipment is important. Here's a discussion of this issue on another board 4 years ago--including a query to and response from to the CDC:

http://www.apneasupport.org/about18274.html

Sleep center? I'll bet that many people use tap water in their home CPAP units. I know I have done this in the past.  I wonder if you may also be at risk for the brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, that has caused two deaths from people using tap water in netti-pots.  The risk may be small, but it is not worth it. Distilled water only!

Wow. Thanks for that bit of intel (i.e., Naeglena fowleri ), Todd. I occasionally use a netti pot.

Todd Last said:

Sleep center? I'll bet that many people use tap water in their home CPAP units. I know I have done this in the past.  I wonder if you may also be at risk for the brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, that has caused two deaths from people using tap water in netti-pots.  The risk may be small, but it is not worth it. Distilled water only!

That is exactly what I was thinking!! Just read and you will know what to do!!

Wade Hampton said:

Hello everyone,

It says right on my S9 water tank to use only distilled water.  This is in plain English 

imprinted on the tank.  Can't people read?  Also it is not difficult to make your own

distilled water.  

Thanks  H. Hampton

Mike: I did not know you could contract Legionnaires from tap water? Was it possibly due to mold that grew over time from a humidifier that was not ever cleaned, and plus the Lab used tap water rather than a more acidic water like distilled, or reverse osmosis water?

Hi Paul:

That is not always the case. A big Hospital that has political conections can keep a lot of things out of the News. Like for example a mentally ill man jumped or fell, (no one will ever know for sure) to his death off of a 5th Story Hospital Bldg. He was missing for almost 24 hr's before another patient- saw him behind some shrubbery. She didn't think it was a real person, thought it was one of those Annie Dolls they use in CPR class. But she pointed it out to her Nurse and then Nurse took it from there. Very bizzarre- but true story- and it was kept out of the Media. That was back in the late 90's. True different today with everyone have more modern cell phone's and communication spreads faster. But just about 10 years ago, that was not the case. Also, one of my patient's- his brother contracted Legionaires from his Cpap humidifier. The only black mold in his house- was narrowed down to his Cpap unit. But while very ill, he did recover. So the story has a ring of truth to it - from my perspective. The family of the 7 year old may not have know how the child contracted it, but the hospital may have.
Paul R said:

Mike, a hospital staff can't cover up the death of a 7 year old boy.

Mike said:

Paul R -- you assume the staff at the center didn't cover up their mistake well.  i would think just the opposite.  

Paul R said:

Mike, with all due respect, while your message is a good one, that yes, we should all be using distilled water, not tap, in our humidifier, i can't help but think your story is apocryphal.

Something like this would (should?) have been all over that center's local news and there would be no need to keep the name of this center anonymous. A 7 year old boy contracting Legionnaire's disease because the wrong type of water was used in a sleep study? Forget local news, this would have been national!

But like I said, your message is a good one and that one should be very careful about the quality of water one puts into his/her humidifier.

i also hear that a bigger hospital is more easily able to cover up this type of thing.

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