Avoid zoo fever
I'm quoted by Beacon Journal medical writer Tracy Wheeler's recent article Avoid Zoo Fever, which addresses the issue of fair safety precautions -- like handwashing -- to avoid getting E. coli at petting zoos and fairs. She also addresses the hidden risks, which handwashing won't help.
From the article:
Sometimes, though, the risk is hidden. Consider what happened at the Medina County Fair in 2000, when 27 Northeast Ohioans were sickened by E. coli-contaminated water and ice used by vendors. The problem occurred when water near the cattle barn was siphoned into the water lines by hoses left lying in puddles. Washing their hands after petting the cows wouldn't have helped them at all.``So what do we do?'' asked Seattle attorney Bill Marler of the Marler Clark firm, which files lawsuits nationwide related to bacterial illness. ``Banish the county fair? Close down petting zoos?''
No, he said. But state legislatures should pass laws requiring hand-washing stations, signs explaining the threat of E. coli and other pathogens and the risk to small children, sanitary walkways and railings, ventilation in buildings to reduce airborne contamination, and a ban of food sales near areas where there is contact with animals.
Only Pennsylvania has passed such legislation.
``Perhaps these laws won't eliminate the risk to public health,'' he said, ``but for a minimal investment, organizers can reduce the risk of sending kids to the hospital -- or worse.''
At least thirty people in Kershaw County, South Carolina have become ill with an apparent foodborne illness. While public health officials work to discover the bacteria or virus making people ill, those sickened may be turning to the Internet for information on foodborne illnesses. Marler Clark has re-launched its Web site about foodborne illness, 
"We're talking about investigators finding vermin, food stored at temperatures over 50 degrees higher than what is considered safe, and a 'pink, slimy substance' in the washing machine," Marler said.
The Associated Press reports that the Food and Drug Administration says workers at one of four Mexican green onion farms inspected as the result of a 2003 hepatitis outbreak lived in windowless metal shacks with no showers. Shallow trenches ran from an area littered with soiled diapers and other human waste, downhill to onion fields and a packaging house, recently released documents show.
As the Tampa Tribune reported, health officials say at least 30 people got seriously ill after they attended the Strawberry Festival, Florida State Fair or Central Florida Fair. Genetic testing linked at least 22 of those cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication of the virulent 0157:H7 strain of E. coli, to animals at Ag-Venture Farm Shows. The Plant City company supplied animals to all three events.
In a 
