A Few Parasitic Statistics

The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that over sixty million people in the United States are likely infected with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite associated with raw meat and contact with cat feces.

In 2003, a report on food borne parasites prepared for the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison cited an estimated two and a half million cases of food and waterborne Giardia lamblia and three million cases of Cryptosporidium parvum in the U.S. alone. Both protozoan parasites are transmitted through drinking water contaminated with the fecal material of infected persons.

And while only a minimal number of cases are detected and reported, some estimate that approximately fifty million Americans are infected with worm parasites.

Parasites range from the stuff of late night horror shows – measuring in at several feet in length – to those that are invisible to the naked eye. There are more than a hundred different types of parasites who enjoy living out their lives inside of human beings. In the United States alone, one-third of nearly six thousand fecal specimens tested came back positive for nineteen species of intestinal parasites at the Parasitology Center, Inc. (PCI) in Scottsdale, Arizona.