Risk Surrounding Corals and Precautions You Need to Take While Handling Them

October 6, 2021 Donny white Health

Many people love watching marine organisms especially, corals. Corals are fascinating for many people. At the same time, corals are mysterious to many people. However, no one finds them dangerous, the first case of palytoxin poisoning came to light in May 2017.

In South Australia, after cleaning the corals of their home aquarium, a family started to have adverse health effects. There was no direct evidence to prove it was a palytoxin poisoning, but the symptom, and how quickly the symptoms started showing was enough for discovering the fact. These days, you can find corals online atvarious stores like AkvaStore. AkvaStore is an auction platform facilitating people to buy and sell everything they need for aquarium business or home aquarium.

A person needs to have proper knowledge about corals if they need it for their home aquarium. Everyone more or less is aware of what corals are. What they are unaware of is the dangers surrounding it. So, let us start by exploring the potential dangers surrounding corals.

Table of Contents

Palytoxin

The popularity of having marine aquariums with corals in the house has increased dramatically. One of the popular coral species among marine aquarium fanatics is Zoanthid. It is also one of the species containing palytoxin. Palytonix is dangerous to human health. Colonial anemones or zoanthid corals are soft corals.

People also know these ornamental decorative corals as “Zoas”, “button polyps”, or “sun polyps”. Some species of zoanthid and certain marine organisms contain high toxins. Palytoxin is a naturally – occurred, highly toxic and potentially lethal substance. It is also one of the most toxic non-proteinaceous natural compounds people know today.

You can experience adverse health effects even if you come approximately someone with skin exposure. Skin exposure due to prolong handling, inhalation of aerosols, coral dust or steam vapors while they are cleaning, growing, separating, mechanically destroying or removing corals is common. You can also be exposed to the toxins while cleaning tanks containing corals.

Precautions you should take while handling corals

Many corals are harmful. However, despite the risk people, love having these corals in their aquarium. If you are also one of them, here are a few precautions you should take while handling the corals. It will help you in avoiding an accident. Therefore, here is what you should do and what you should avoid while handling corals.

Never handle corals with bare hands.
Keep general handling of corals as minimum as you can.
Always check the water level of the aquarium, so the corals remain submerged all the time.
Handle corals when they are deep under the water.
Never place corals under a powerful halide light when they are out of water.
Always carefully dispose of water from the marine aquarium.
Always avoid activities producing aerosols.
Palytoxin can travel a certain distance so, always keep this fact in mind.
Palytoxin is heat stable, always remember it.