I just hope this doesn't become the catchall jump-to conclusion for every unexplained rash/chest pain/what have you people with reef tanks experience. 'I can't explain something, therefore I have an explanation for it' is right up there with humanities most loved logical fallacies.
Our expanding discussion of a phenomenon creates ample breeding ground for people to pin any sort of otherwise unexplained happenings on something that sounds new and scary (for example, there was no such thing as an alien abduction story until Betty and Barney Hill popularized their 'abduction' in popular media).
Now, I don't believe anyone is imagining anything, and the symptoms people have experienced are most certainly real symptoms of something, but the only way to confirm a case of palytoxin poisoning is to a) confirm that it's actually present in the local environment in the first place and b) confirm via blood tests that a person has been poisoned. There are thousands of other things in our reefs, homes, lives, etc. that can cause allergic reactions, rashes, respiratory ailments and you name it that you might not know you've been exposed to. Considering how powerful this toxin is, if it was really that wide spread in our tanks there would be far more dead reefers, or reefers in intensive care than there are.
With that said, I'm not saying that people here or in other places haven't been affected by it, or that it's not in our tanks, or that it's not a risk. Even a small risk with consequences that severe warrants appropriate protections. Thankfully it seems to be a small number of species that harbour this toxin in appreciable quantities, and it's crappy that it isn't easier to tell which ones have it and which don't. I certainly bought a pair of gloves after reading that article a few weeks ago, and have thought twice about boiling my rocks.
Considering how long people have been keeping zoas however, I also don't think it's as big a problem as the part of our brains that evolved to see lions in every rustle of the leaves wants us to believe either.
Now after typing that annoyingly skeptical little blurb, I'm almost guaranteed to drop dead the next time I stick my hands in nano zoa tank.
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