Contact lenses: watch out for water

According to the press agency, Reuters, and also reported in the Italian daily, Libero, it is extremely dangerous to wash contact lenses in tap water, touch them with wet hands or wear them while washing your face. You could catch Acanthamoeba keratitis, an eye infection that can cause devastating ulceration of the cornea, which could even lead to blindness.

The alarm was raised by specialists at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London; they investigated the quality of the British water system after ascertaining that in the UK 1 person in 30 thousand had the infection, 15 times higher than in the United States and 7 times higher than in the Netherlands.

Until a short time ago in the UK, every house had a tank of cold water which was used as a reserve. According to John Dart, the doctor who headed the study, the stagnant water in these tanks, which are still being used, is the ideal breeding habitat for Acanthamoeba.

By comparing the DNA of the ameba found in his patients with those of the organisms in the reserve water tanks, Dart demonstrated that there was a match in 6 cases out of 8.