CDC Creates New Algae Bloom Reporting Web Site

With the growing awareness across the United States of the occurrence of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has launched a site to give more visibility to HAB incidents. It will carry reports by public health departments and their designated environmental health and animal health partners about where HAB events have or are occurring, if foodborne HAB-associated illnesses have taken place with no observed HAB event, and where there are animal cases of illness associated with HABs. 

The development of HABs in Lake Erie have given this matter national prominence and many assume automatically that their incidence is somehow linked to farming. HABs in freshwater systems are very unstable and as a practical matter no database of them has been created as a result. Freshwater HABs happen one year, and not the next, or they happen in one part of a lake or river one year, and then in another location in another year, if they happen at all.  

To visit the website, see “One Health Harmful Algal Bloom System (OHHABS)” at http://www.cdc.gov/habs/ohhabs.html.

Reporting is voluntary. Members of the public that want to report a HAB or a HAB illness in people or animals are directed to contact their local or state health department.