The NBC News reported on July 9, 2013, that the scientists have discovered about the health hazards caused by the cat poop parasites.
The cat poop carries a parasite known as Toxoplasma gondi, which may cause human illness, mostly amongst pregnant women and people with weak immune system.
Cats acquire the parasite while preying, say a mice or a bird. And they shed the parasite eggs called oocysts in their poop. Children may get infected by the oocysts while playing with sandboxes and the backyard dirt.
A recent study by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey and Dr. Robert H. Yolken, the scientists at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, has revealed that the amount of oocysts is more rampant than imagined, perhaps between 3 to 434 oocysts per square foot of the soil. And alarmingly, it takes only a single oocyst to cause infections.
There have been unproven links between high levels of T, gondi and development of conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.
The NBC News Health quoted Torrey, the psychiatrist who heads the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Chevy Chase saying, “It may be a much bigger problem than we realize.” However, responsible cat owners are at lower risk of being infected as compared to the rest.
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