The list of the 10 most deadly outbreaks of food- and waterborne illness in U.S. history, previously published by Food Safety News, has been revised for a presentation in Sacramento to the California Environmental Health Association.
Added to the list is a 1903 outbreak of typhoid fever in Ithaca, NY, which caused 82 deaths, among them 29 Cornell University students.
The addition of the Ithaca typhoid fever outbreak to the most-deadly ranks drops from the list the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak involving bagged spinach grown at Paicines Ranch in San Benito County, California. There were five fatalities in that outbreak, in which about 200 people became ill after eating bagged spinach.
The only other revision in the list involves the 1919 botulism outbreak caused by canned ripe olives, previously reported as being responsible for killing 15. The death toll was actually 19.
With the revisions, the nation’s deadliest foodborne outbreaks have taken the lives of 423 people, with 232 of those succumbing to typhoid fever. The other deaths were due to Listeria (93), Streptococcus (70), botulism (19) and Salmonella Typhimurium (9).
FoodWorld 