Damon Edstrom

First Aid and CPR

6/24/2010
Food poisoning is the result of consuming either food or drink that has been contaminated with bacteria,

toxins, parasites, viruses or chemicals. There are many different types of food poisoning that can occur with a wide

range of symptom combinations which even go to the specifications of general symptoms such as

noninflammatory diarrhea from enterotoxins and inflammatory diarrhea from cytotoxin. Common effects from

food poisoning include: diarrhea, abdominal pain, and dehydration.

Food poisoning is very common in the United States with data from 2006 in a 2009 study showing around

76,000,000 illnesses, 35,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. This was a large increase in frequency compared to

the previous thought estimate which guessed only six to eight million cases of illness, but on the other side there

were an estimated 9,000 deaths that were thought to be caused by food poisoning which actually was an increase

from the real numbers. Outbreaks, food illnesses in more than one victim with the contaminated food as evidence,

were not nearly as common as isolated incidents. Only 27,364 illnesses were found in 1,270 outbreaks with only 11

deaths reported from these outbreaks, E.Coli being responsible for six of the eleven. In the outbreaks it was found

that the leading foods causing of these outbreaks were poultry, leafy greens and fruits/nuts.

Factors that change frequency are such things as traveling to foreign countries which can spread food

borne illness either into that country or bring it back from that country seeing as how the onset for food poisoning

is usually 3 days to 2 weeks in length. Also elderly people are more likely to contract food poisoning because of

decrease in immunity, decreased production of gastric acid lack of nutrition, insufficiency of exercise, quality of life

in a retirement or nursing home, and an abundance of antibiotics prescribed by their physician. Children under the

age of five also seem to get food poisoning very often with two to three cases per child every year in developed

countries and rates skyrocket to about five times that rate in developing countries. In underdeveloped countries

there are about one billion cases of acute diarrhea each year from poisoning which is responsible for four to six

million deaths every year. 97% of all cases of food poisoning are a direct result of improper food handling 79% of

these are from commercial food production and the remaining 21% from mistakes in food handling within

households.
 Damon Edstrom
First Aid and CPR
6/24/2010
In conclusion, food poisoning affects millions of lives in the United States every year many of which can be

avoided by simple food handling skills. Education on how to prevent food poisoning and learning where produce

comes from can cut these numbers down tremendously. Food doesn’t have to kill.