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Blooming cyanobacteria can produce cyanotoxins in such concentrations that they can poison and even kill animals and humans. Cyanotoxins can also accumulate in other animals such as fish and shellfish, and cause poisonings such as shellfish poisoning. Some of the most powerful natural poisons known are cyanotoxins.
There have been cases of non-lethal poisoning in humans who have ingested water from streams and lakes that contain various genera of cyanobacteria that are capable of producing anatoxin-a. The effects of non-lethal poisoning were primarily gastrointestinal: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. [12]
Cyanophages also infect bloom-forming cyanobacteria that can be toxic to health of humans and other animals through the production of microcystin and cause eutrophication, leading to oxygen minimum zones.
Last month, over 50 beaches were closed for swimming in Massachusetts due to excess bacteria, some of which was cyanobacteria. In 2018, toxic blooms of blue-green algae caused a smell in parts of ...
Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) bloom on Lake Erie (United States) in 2009. These kinds of algae can cause harmful algal bloom. A harmful algal bloom (HAB), or excessive algae growth, is an algal bloom that causes negative impacts to other organisms by production of natural algae-produced toxins, water deoxygenation, mechanical damage to other organisms, or by other means.
The microcystin-producing Microcystis is a genus of freshwater cyanobacteria and thrives in warm water conditions, especially in stagnant waters. [7] The EPA predicted in 2013 that climate change and changing environmental conditions may lead to harmful algae growth and may negatively impact human health. [20]
The name "cyanobacteria" (from Ancient Greek κύανος (kúanos) 'blue') refers to their bluish green color, [8] [9] which forms the basis of cyanobacteria's informal common name, blue-green algae, [10] [11] [12] although as prokaryotes they are not scientifically classified as algae.
The Chinese general Zhu-Ge Liang was the first to observe cyanobacteria poisoning about 1000 years ago. He reported the death of troops who drank green coloured water from a river in southern China. [citation needed] The first published report of an incidence of cyanobacteria poisoning dates from the poisoning of an Australian lake in 1878. [24]