Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Cyclospora

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

The US has an unusual number of outbreaks of food-borne illness going on in the summer of 2026, and the star of the show is cyclospora. How does this parasite make people sick, where does it come from? You may not want to know.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Yeah, this outbreak, as of August 13th, which is the latest data we could find, it's August 20th now. So this is old. Okay. It's 28,056 people have been sickened with cyclosporiasis. I'm going to, I'm going with cyclosporiasis. It sounded like you gave the British pronunciation. Boreasis, yes. Yeah.

It suddenly sounded like you had tea in your hand. Yeah. So 28,000 plus people have been sickened. people have died. And just a month before, it was at 9,481 cases. And you're like, wow, that's a lot of people. And it is. This is actually the third biggest foodborne outbreak in U.S. history. From what anyone could tell, it's the biggest cyclospora outbreak in human history. And even with those eye-popping stats associated with it, that 28,000 case number is probably just a fraction of the actual number of cases of people who have gotten sickened by with cyclosporiasis.

Yeah, for sure. I think there are only 38 states reporting. The, you know, as far as reporting goes, it's like people who went to the hospital. And a lot of people just, like, wrote it out, I'm sure. And then even at the hospital, you have to have a special test to see if it's actually that. And not all the hospitals probably did that test. So they probably just treated people for dehydration and diarrhea. So it's a much bigger number than that. And let's talk about what this thing is because it is not a plant. It's not a fungus or an animal.

It's not a bacteria or a virus. It is a protozoan and it's a parasite and the human is the host. Yeah. And it's not brand new. But the reason we can pretty confidently say that in all of human history, this is the biggest outbreak of cyclosporiasis, is because the first case that anyone's ever documented was in like 1978 in Papua, New Guinea. And it's even newer here in the United States. The first outbreak was in 1995, right? Yeah, in Chicago, only 23 cases. Then there was one in Florida the next year, about 45 cases. Those were raspberries from Guatemala.

And every summer, basically, there was a little something, but nothing like we saw this year. This stuff can live, this protozoan can live in rivers. It lives in water. Drinking water, rivers, lakes, swimming pools. And it likes to hide in like berries and leafy vegetables because there's lots of little crevices and nooks and crannies where it won't get washed out, even if you're like rinsing your stuff. Also on knives and utensils and also from unwashed hands. Gross. Very gross.

Very gross. Like just let's be clear, it passes through. human sewage. That's its mode of transportation, right? That's right. So that means that somebody had human poop on their knife or their hands, if that's where you got it. Yeah.

So we should talk about the life cycle because it begins when it enters your mouth. It is in what's the earliest stage, it's an infectious oocyst. Did you know how that's what was pronounced? That's the British way pronouncing it. I'm going with oo-sist. It is O-O-Syst. I actually look that up. Oh.

And it is an egg that basically protects it from the outside world until it gets into the human system, where it latches onto your gut and starts a 14-stage life cycle, which takes two days to two weeks to incubate before it becomes an infection. Yeah, and the reason it takes so long is because that u-u-s-s-s-sis, is that what you said? Yeah, with emphasis on the first ooh. Ooh. Or O-O-O-Syst, sorry. O-O-Sist. Yeah. I like, ooh-o-sist.

It's very tough. It's like a tough container, like you said, that protects the actual infectious part. And it has to break down. And it's evolved to break down in the human gut, thanks to your digestive juices and your bile and the temperature of your body inside your gut. All those things come together and break that oocy down. And now, all of a sudden, four sausage-shaped sporulets get dumped out into your gut and start going to work. And essentially making it really hard for your gut to absorb water. And because your body's trying to poop this stuff out, you have water butt like you have never had it before.

That's right. And every time you do poop, you pass along up to 10,000 oocyst per cubic. centimeter of feces. That's a lot. Owee gooey feces, it says. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right.

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You said the main symptom is really. really bad diarrhea, which obviously was going to lead to bad dehydration, like dangerous dehydration, and electrolyte imbalances, potential kidney damage risk, maybe hospitalization, as we've seen, up to 10% body weight weight loss. That's nuts. That's a lot, you know, depending on who you are, but that's a lot no matter what because it's 10% of whoever you are, you know. Yeah, what's interesting is there's not the inflammation or fever that's usually associated with

a stomach bug. It's just a lot of pooping and the risk of really bad dehydration and then all the stuff that comes with that, right? That's right. So once you poop that stuff out, it makes it back into the water supply. It gets back into your food stuff, as we'll talk about in a second. And then the cycle begins again. And that's probably what happened. The water supply was used on food crops where really if you step back and think about it for even a second, it shouldn't be. But let's talk about Chuck why this U.S. outbreak in 2026 is the biggest one, the biggest cyclosporiasis outbreak in human history. Yeah. Well, one is a climate change, you know, with rising temperatures across the globe. These, you know, I don't think we mentioned

that this thing used to be found only in the tropics. Right. But now these pathogens can be found elsewhere because of rising temps. The second one, and, you know, we're not getting political, but this is just a stone cold fact, this presidential administration has cut funding for food safety programs, including two key ones that might have stopped this, the Food Emergency Response Network. They grant states funding to test for food pathogens like this, and FoodNet, which tracks outbreak-causing pathogens. And FoodNet specifically, literally because of a lack of funding, stopped tracking six of the eight pathogens that it used to always track. and cyclospora is one of those. Yep.

So, you know, that's just the deal. Plus, the federal agencies that are responsible for basically taking the lead and guiding health care providers and public health officials and all that stuff throughout the country just sat on their hands for months, as a matter of fact. It was about two full months before the CDC step forward with guidelines. and essentially basically really started talking about this publicly. In the meantime, this outbreak was bad enough that somebody had to do something. So Michigan ended up stepping forward and filling the role that the CDC was just dropping the ball on. They ended up issuing guidelines and stuff that obviously weren't regulations or anything,

but that other health care providers and other states were like, okay, good, now I know what to do, thanks to the state of Michigan, not the federal government, which is supposed to do. And if you put all that together, you're like, wow, this happened really fast. And to me, it gives a picture of, like, the United States built a really impressive foodborne illness surveillance network that was fragile, apparently, but that really worked. Because if you just pull that stuff away and then this is the stuff that happens, I think there's 20 foodborne outbreaks right now going on in the United States. Yeah. It's, in a way, it's really impressive how effective it was before. Yeah, for sure.

And boy, hats off to you, Michiganders for taking the lead on that. One of the other big reasons is big agriculture when it's, you know, something like that has been consolidated so much an industry has. That means that, you know, Americans are getting their crops from just, you know, the same places, basically. So if something like this happens, like happened at Taylor Farms, this was Taylor Farms to Mexico, which was the agricultural site, even though it's a California-based company. All of a sudden, this stuff's going out all over the country. There's also a – Taylor Farms is also being identified as a source of the other outbreaks. A couple of them, the San Manila outbreak, at least from jalapinos, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. And for those who don't speak Spanish, Taylor Farms de Mexico means Taylor Farms of Mexico. So, and it's not just Mexico or Guatemala where you're going to find tainted produce. Something I was kind of alluding to earlier is that the cyclospora finds its way to your food crops through human sewage. And that can actually happen in the United States because there are, let me find it, More than half, I think 27 states allow for treated sewage water to be used to irrigate food crops. I did not know that. I didn't either.

Nine states don't have any policy. Four have guidelines. And 14 states allow it for crops but not food crops. Yeah. And, you know, yeah, that's where it's coming from. Yes. So they, and we did say treated sewage waste. Yeah, of course.

Right. So it's not like they're just spraying like feces all over your lettuce. But essentially on a microscopic level, they often are because a lot of sewage treatment plants aren't set up to handle cyclospora. Because again, this is not your average bacteria or virus. This is its own thing. So the oocytes, cysts, can make it through onto your lettuce or whatever. And then also sometimes those bacteria and the. the viruses that the sewage treatment plant is set up to take care of, make it through anyway.

So this is what I was saying. It seems pretty smart to just stop using treated sewage on food crops. Yeah, and maybe fund the agencies that are responsible for keeping track of this stuff would be awesome. For sure. Yeah. So if you feel at all like you should go to the hospital, if you have cyclosporiasis right now, or if you have really bad water, but for any reason, just go. Like, don't risk it, whatever.

But if you don't want to get cyclosporiasis, there are some steps you can take. One of them is at the very least wash off all of your stuff because that can help, but cyclosporiasis can still hide, right, Chuck? Yeah, I mean, we talked in Act 1 about the little nooks and crannies and it's, you know, hard to get to sometimes. The only thing to, like, kill it is to cook it to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. But you're not cooking your lettuce for your taco. No, that's great. That's like the mom and better off dead who boiled the bacon. Yeah, that was a really silly part of that movie, that whole mom scene.

Yeah. Stuff that's, you know, like stuff that has a nice wrapper around it, like a banana or an avocado, you're doing okay. And, you know, do plenty of hand washing, obviously, as well. For sure. And if you are on the verge or I've already started an email telling us how you used to like us before we became political, just stop. Don't bother. Short stuff's out. should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart

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