A family in Shropshire nearly died from the world’s second-deadliest toxin while cleaning out coral from their fish tank.
Katie Stevenson, 34, and her husband Mark from Newport, near Telford had to be rushed to hospital by paramedics wearing masks and put into isolation for 48 hours.
Three of their four children were also taken to hospital.
Stevenson and her husband were in hospital for about a week while the children, who had been asleep at the time, were discharged the day after.
Their home cordoned off by a hazardous response team after Stevenson began scrubbing the coral while cleaning the tank. This released the toxin, called palytoxin, which poisoned them.
She told the Shropshire Star: “All sorts of things were going through my mind. My kids could have died. We could have died. I’ve not slept properly since.”
She said their fish had died while they were on holiday so they decided to get rid of the tank but wanted to clean it first.
“About 10 minutes after cleaning the tank, I started to get a really dry cough. I said to Mark ‘I have a sore throat coming’, he said the same thing.
“We left it an hour, and I started getting really bad shivers. My temperature went up to 42 Celsius. We called 111 and they sent an ambulance.”
The fire service and police were also called to the scene.
“It was terrifying,” Stevenson said. “The paramedics who came to get me were wearing masks. The whole A&E was isolated. They told us if we’d gone to sleep, we wouldn’t have woken up.”
Cases of poisoning by palytoxin are extremely rare and dangerous and not all types of coral are dangerous when handled.