Photo Above: Toledo area residents travel long distances across the city and stand in long lines awaiting water during the 2014 water crisis. Source: The Toledo Blade
Lake Erie provides drinking water to 11 million people. The toxin released by the algae, called microcystin, is a hepatoxin (a toxic chemical that damages the liver). Symptoms of poisoning include headache, sore throat, vomiting and nausea, stomach pain, dry cough, diarrhea, blistering around the mouth and pneumonia. It is also a neurotoxin with unknown effects (EPA).
When the water is made toxic by cyanobacteria in the algal blooms, it becomes unusable to people who rely on it - 3 million in Ohio, 100,000 in Michigan. In August 2014, 500,000 Toledo, OH residents were warned by all news sources not to drink the tap water, bathe in it, wash their dishes or brush their teeth with it, or give it to their pets. Filtering the water wouldn't help. Boiling it would make it worse. Bottled water vanished from grocery store shelves in hours after the news broke at the beginning of the ban.
During the crisis Toledo residents relied on water supplied by the Ohio National Guard, three fire stations or they drove up to an hour to neighboring towns that use well water to stock up. If nothing is done to prevent further damage to the lake, this could be a yearly repeating scenario.