by Elizabeth Grossman On Sunday August 21, a cleaning process designed to make tomatoes safe for customers eating marinara sauce, pizza topping, and canned tomatoes resulted in a release of chlorine dioxide gas that sent 43 workers at the Pacific Coast Producers plant in Woodland, California to area hospitals. According to Pacific Coast Producers vice […]
As debt-ceiling negotiations continue and members of both parties express a desire for “leaner” government, James Kwak at The Atlantic offers an important reminder: Measuring the size of the US government by how much money it spends can be misleading. Social Security and Medicare, both of which are extremely popular, account for a huge chunk […]
After blaming cucumbers, backpedaling on the cucumbers and blaming bean sprouts, then backpedaling on the sprouts, German authorities have now concluded that bean sprouts are, in fact, to blame for the spread of E. coli O104:H4, which has sickened more than 3,000 people and killed 31. Patients with the most severe cases have suffered kidney […]
In Germany, 17 people have died and more than 1,500 sickened by a particularly virulent strain of E. coli. Der Spiegel explains that this rare E. coli serotype, O104:H4, is especially virulent; after infection by as few as 100 bacteria, many patients develop hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can result in kidney failure and even death. […]
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Deborah Blum at Slate: Bring Back the Poison Squad (“If we look back to a similar crisis of food safety in the last century, we see that federal regulators were willing to risk their lives to protect the rest of us.”) Jenny Gold of Kaiser Health News […]
We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric about the need to slash government spending, so it’s a good time to remind everyone that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – and if you think you’re getting a free lunch, it might be loaded with pathogens. Maryn McKenna, writing at Superbug about a New England […]
Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we’re re-posting some content from our old site. By Liz Borkowski, originally posted 11/3/09 New York-based Fairbank Farms is recalling more than 500,000 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Gardiner Harris reports in the New York Times that two people – […]
The Iowa-based company Wright County Egg is recalling 380 million eggs, which were sold to distributors and wholesalers in 22 states and Mexico, due to concerns about salmonella contamination. The eggs have been sold under several different brand names, so if you’ve got eggs in your fridge you can check FDA’s page for info. Salmonella-infected […]
Environmental Health
“We are by no means through this disaster” – Gulf Coast fishing community searches for some certainty
by Elizabeth Grossman “After three long months of oil geysering continuously from the depths of the Gulf, a temporary cap has stemmed the flow and it appears that the well is on its way to being killed. But we are by no means through this disaster,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his opening remarks […]