Feb 24, 2009 6:07 pm US/Eastern
Tracking The Source Of Food-Borne Illnesses
PITTSBURGH, Pa. (CBS) ―
In the last few months, nearly 600 people across the country have gotten sick from eating salmonella-tainted peanut butter; and that's just the latest contaminated food outbreak.
While public health officials try to stay on top of food-related outbreaks, tracking down the source of the problem can be a difficult task, reports CBS station KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh.
Every year, about 76 million Americans get sick from eating contaminated food; but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Public health expert Dr. David Damsker estimates that only about five-percent of food-borne illnesses actually get reported.
"Not everyone who gets it feels sick enough to visit a doctor," Dr. Damsker explains. "They may have one episode of diarrhea and that's all the symptoms that ever occur in that person."
Even when a case is reported, Damsker says tracking down the cause can be tough.
"Whenever people develop symptoms, a lot of times the first thing they think of is, 'Oh, it's the restaurant that I just ate at that got me sick'; when in reality, the incubation period for a lot of these diseases is one to three days, or even longer. So it may very well, actually most likely, is not the restaurant you just ate at that got you sick."
To complicate matters even further, bacteria and viruses can live on surfaces for hours to days; so food may not even be the culprit.
Salad bar utensils, for example, can be contaminated by someone who is sick and hasn't washed his or her hands. "The next five, six, ten people who touch those same salad tongs will be affected with a virus the person left on those salad tongs," Dr. Damsker adds, "so it doesn't have to be from the food."
When he and his team investigate reports of food-related illnesses, Damsker says they look for common factors linking the cases – like they all ate in the same restaurant or shared the same food.
After combining the information from their reports, they try to pinpoint a probable source and a health inspector will then do an on-site investigation.
"We'll go back until we find out that it is either not or that it is the cause," explains Heath Inspector Bill Roth. "If it is the cause, generally speaking, we will close the place down until we find out what happened there so that we don't have any more people becoming sick."
It's a coordinated effort-- all to keep public safety a top priority.
Damsker says it can be difficult to tell the difference between food poisoning and a viral illness; however, viruses tend to spread much more quickly and can infect a large number of people within days.
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