[hkgar]

Originally Posted by tkeracer619

I spent 20 or so hours in the ER from Palytoxin. Do not tread lightly here.

While some people have different sensitivities to some of the toxins in tanks know that palytoxin is not one of those. It is a neurotoxin and will kill you if exposed to enough of it through phyiscal contact, ingestion, or inhalation from steam transport.

Regardless of how you feel if you suspect you have been exposed to palytoxin go to the ER and insist they contact poison control. The longest time from exposure to death on the books is 18 hours from sudden heart failure. You NEED to be at the hospital. Even if they have no experience with it (they likely don't) poison control will.

My ER didn't have experience with it, there was an active line to poison control for 18 hours.

I'm not even going to touch your tank if it has palys.

My experience with Palytoxin and the hospital stay was 60 hours. I remember telling the EMT what I believed I had. He goggled it, look at me and said "Holy s***, it says it is the second deadliest marine reef toxin". After the ER doctor got done talking with Poison Control, and asked. "oK, if this is going to kill me, how will I die?" Answer - organ failure, heart, kidney, liver. Next question, What can be done. Answer, nothing observe and treat what starts to go wrong. With me it was respiratory failure and steroid treatments which I will be taking for the rest of my life. Sure I am 70, and did have asthma before this happened , but it did do significant and irreparable damage to my lungs. The lung damage may have occurred because my method of contact was inhalation.


Zoas are dangerous things and they will never see the inside of my tank either.