Woman Suffers Severe Injury from Pressure Cooker

An Indian woman suffered a severe injury as the whistle (or pressure relief) from a pressure cooker shot off the canner into her eye and lodged into her scull.

These issues are rare, but serves as a reminder for those using pressure cookers or canners to pay attention when heating under pressure to prevent excess pressure from building up in the canner.  In this case, the woman was doing something else and had ignored the whistling sound generated by the canner and then tried to move the canner rather than just turning off the heat.

Other important measures to take..make sure your canner is clean and in good working condition, including the pressure canner/cooker pressure relief/whistler/giggler value is free of build up and the pressure monitoring gauge is working.  Be sure pressures are within the range called for in the recipe, and take corrective action such as reducing heat if the pressure goes a few pounds above that pressure.  If excessive pressures are reached, turn off the heat completely, and stay away from unit until pressure dissipates.

Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/health/pressure-cooker-whistle-skull
Pressure cooker whistle shoots off, lodges into woman's skull
By Madeline Farber | Fox News
9/9/19

Savory Jellies and Jams are the Rage, But There Can be a Botulism Concern

Savory jams and jellies are trending...showing up as condiments in upscale restaurants, on cooking shows, and of course, on numerous websites with recipes for home preparation.  But as was seen last month in Denmark, there is a botulism risk.  In this case, nine people became deathly ill after consuming savory jelly product.

The issue is that many of the recipes are not scientifically validated, that is, tested to ensure safety.  The issue comes in when these items may not be shelf-stable but people treat it like a jam or jelly they buy from the store.  In these items, the savory component is of neutral pH, and if not properly acidified or preserved in some other way, that component within the jelly matrix can support the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the causative agent of botulism poisoning.  The savory component could also cause the overall pH to rise as well, again, allowing growth of C. botulinum.   The boiling process used in making the jam or jelly does not eliminate the spores of this bacterium, and when he product is left at room temperature, the spores germinate, and this bacterium then grows within the savory particulate.

So unless one is following approved recipes, such as the ones from the Center for Home Food Preservation, it is important to store your concoction at refrigeration temperature - from the time it is made until it is all used.  A additional concern then arisies when gifting this homemade item to a friend...they must be informed of the need to store in the refrigerator, even if not yet opened.

Food Safety News
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2018/07/danish-botulism-outbreak-traced-to-homemade-savory-jelly/#.W1s-nE3rt9A
Danish botulism outbreak traced to homemade savory jelly 
By Joe Whitworth | July 26, 2018

Homemade savory jelly caused an outbreak of foodborne botulism in Denmark last month, according to the Statens Serum Institut (SSI).

Improperly Canned Potatoes Responsible for Botulism Outbreak in April, 2015

In April of  2015, a botulism outbreak occurred that was associated with food served at a Church Potluck Meal.  In this outbreak, 29 reported becoming ill.  This was the largest botulism outbreak in the last 40 years.

The source was home canned potatoes.  The potatoes were canned in hot water bath and not a pressure canner.  From the CDC:

The attendee who prepared the potato salad with home-canned potatoes reported using a boiling water canner, which does not kill C. botulinum spores, rather than a pressure canner, which does eliminate spores (2). In addition, the potatoes were not heated after removal from the can, a step that can inactivate botulinum toxin. The combined evidence implicated potato salad prepared with improperly home-canned potatoes, a known vehicle for botulism (3).

Unfortunately, we hear of too many who still use a hot water bath to can low acid foods.  Outbreaks like this remind us of the importance of following scientifically developed canning recipes, especially the use of a pressure canner for low acid foods.
 
CDC Morbidity and Mortality
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6429a6.htm?s_cid=mm6429a6_e
Notes from the Field: Large Outbreak of Botulism Associated with a Church Potluck Meal — Ohio, 2015
Weekly
July 31, 2015 / 64(29);802-803

Carolyn L. McCarty, PhD1,2; Kristina Angelo, DO2,3; Karlyn D. Beer, PhD2,3; Katie Cibulskas-White1; Kim Quinn, MS1; Sietske de Fijter, MS1; Rick Bokanyi, PhD1; Eric St. Germain1; Karen Baransi1; Kevin Barlow4; Gwen Shafer4; Larry Hanna4; Kelly Spindler4; Elizabeth Walz, MD5; Mary DiOrio, MD1; Brendan R. Jackson, MD3; Carolina Luquez, PhD3; Barbara E. Mahon, MD3; Colin Basler, DVM2,3; Kathryn Curran, PhD2,3; Almea Matanock, MD2,3; Kelly Walsh, MPH3; Kara Jacobs Slifka, MD2,3; Agam K. Rao, MD3 (Author affiliations at end of text)

On April 21, 2015, the Fairfield Medical Center (FMC) and Fairfield Department of Health contacted the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) about a patient suspected of having botulism in Fairfield County, Ohio. Botulism is a severe, potentially fatal neuroparalytic illness.* A single case is a public health emergency, because it can signal an outbreak (1). Within 2 hours of health department notification, four more patients with similar clinical features arrived at FMC's emergency department. Later that afternoon, one patient died of respiratory failure shortly after arriving at the emergency department. All affected persons had eaten at the same widely attended church potluck meal on April 19. CDC's Strategic National Stockpile sent 50 doses of botulinum antitoxin to Ohio. FMC, the Fairfield Department of Health, ODH, and CDC rapidly responded to confirm the diagnosis, identify and treat additional patients, and determine the source.

Woman Contracts Botulism Poisoning from Improperly Canned Carrots

A North Carolinian woman contracted botulism poisoning after almost eating an improperly processed carrot.   Instead of pressure canning the jars of carrots, she used the hot water bath canning technique (which is only appropriate for high acid foods).  After putting the carrot in her mouth, she realized it was 'off' and spit it out.  However, she ingested enough toxin to get the illness with just putting that carrot in her mouth.

Unfortunately, too many people still process jars of low acid foods (carrots, peas, beans) in boiling water rather than using the pressure canner.  No doubt this woman would have fought against using the pressure canner..its too dangerous, the carrots are not firm, etc.  After 11 weeks in the hospital, maybe she can be a warning to others.

North Carolina Health News
http://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2015/05/12/botulism-case-highlights-need-to-follow-canning-directions/
Botulism Case Highlights Need to Follow Canning Directions
May 12, 2015

 An Ashe County woman learned the hard way her food-preservation techniques were wrong.
By Rose Hoban

It only took one bite.

Five days later, an Ashe County woman lay in the hospital, on a ventilator, unable to breathe.

The woman, who’s name has not been released, told health officials she didn’t even swallow the carrot. She opened the home-canned jar of carrots, tasted one, decided it looked and tasted off, and spit it out.

But that was enough to give her botulism, sending her to the hospital for an 11-week stay.

Botulism Outbreak in Ohio Linked to Home Canned Potatoes, Confirmed Cases Now 21

The source of the botulism outbreak at the Ohio church potluck is most likely the home canned potatoes used to make the potato salad.  In this outbreak, the number of confirmed cases of botulism poisoning is now 21.

While potatoes can be safely canned (if done according to the directions provided by the National Center for Home Food Preservation), it is important to use the right potatoes, the right size, and the use of a pressure canner.  While there has been no further information provided at this point related to the canning procedures used or issues seen on other containers processed that may be still in storage, potatoes can become an issue if not done correctly.  First, potatoes are low acid, so a pressure canner must be used.  Second, it is important the type and the size are correct to allow proper heat movement within the jar (convection heating).  If the size is too big or the potatoes break down during processing, the heating parameters within the jar will change, thus affecting the ability of heat to reach the cold spot of the jar. 

Another issue is the use of home canned foods for volunteer events.   Generally,  bringing home canned foods to volunteer events is discouraged.  In Penn State's Volunteer Food Safety Curriculum, Cooking for Crowds, it states in Chapter 4:

As a precaution, never accept any home-canned or home-preserved food [for volunteer events]. Life-threatening foodborne illness can occur from food that has been preserved incorrectly

 The same must be said for using canned foods as an ingredient in dishes that will be brought and served at group functions.  There are no regulations for these volunteer groups and their functions however and so it comes down to the individual groups to require training and to institute policies.

Getting home preservers to follow scientifically developed recipes is not an easy.   Cases like this are reminders that improper canning procedures can lead to deadly consequences.

CBS/AP
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/source-of-deadly-botulism-outbreak-in-ohio-identified/
Source of deadly botulism outbreak in Ohio identified

April 28, 2015, 9:46 AM

LANCASTER, Ohio -- Health officials say the likely source of the botulism outbreak that killed one person and sickened many others at an Ohio church potluck dinner was home-canned potatoes used in a potato salad.

Botulism and Home Canned Elk Meat

Each year, those one or two cases of botulism that show up in the news serve as reminders of the importance of following proper processing (and using common sense). In summary, Mr. O’Connell thought he would short cut the canning processing by not going through the full heat process so that he could get more jars of elk meat. Rather, he just got the cans to form a vacuum seal and then moved on to the next batch. And when he heard one of the jars pop (lose vacuum) a week later, he threw it in the refrigerator. A few days later, he ate it for supper. Being a learned man, actually a lawyer, he knew something was wrong when his vision got blurry and his legs become wobbly. It progressed to a point where he lost all strength and had shallow breaths. His doctors were able to figure it out in time to save him.

He did use a pressure canner, but failed to follow process. Then instead of tossing the jar with the popped lid, he ate it.

Here are the links to Penn State’s publications.

Let’s Preserve: Basics of Home Canning

http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/PDFs/ee0066.pdf
 
Let's Preserve Meat and Poultry
http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/PDFs/ee0058.pdf

 

Home Canning Hobby Leads to Near-Fatal Medical Emergency
By Austin Jenkins July 20, 2013 KPLU
http://www.kplu.org/post/home-canning-hobby-leads-near-fatal-medical-emergency

Home canning is regaining popularity as part of the local food movement. If done right, families can enjoy home grown fruits, vegetables and even meat all through the winter. But if done wrong, it can be devastating, if not deadly.

A lawyer for the state of Washington recently learned that lesson the hard way.

On the Friday before Mother’s Day this year, Mike O’Connell was looking forward to spending the weekend with his wife at their home in the Seattle area. During the week, he lives alone in Olympia where he works. But he woke that morning with the strangest affliction: double vision.

“There were two of everything and I had an awful time just shaving and getting ready for work,” O’Connell said.



O’Connell, 67, is chief counsel to Washington’s Legislative Ethics Board. He suspected the double vision was related to some laser eye surgery he recently had. He managed to make it into work, but soon went home. That evening, he experienced more strange symptoms.

“My legs felt rubbery,” he said.

The next morning, he felt even worse. He was bumping into walls. He called his wife.

“I told her, ‘You know, I’m going to stop by the ER on the way up just so somebody can tell me I’m okay and I’m not having a stroke,”’ he said.

At the hospital, that’s exactly what they thought he was having. He heard “stroke in progress” called over the intercom. Suddenly he was surrounded by nurses and doctors. O’Connell’s wife arrived. Test results started coming back. There was no evidence of stroke.

“I didn’t know enough to bring up the fact that I had eaten canned meat,” said O’Connell.

Canned meat. You see, the night before O’Connell woke up with double vision, he had eaten some elk meat from a hunting trip. He canned it himself about a week earlier.

“Borrowed a pressure cooker, used an old family recipe for canning,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell’s mother had canned everything when he was a kid. He wanted to recapture a bit of his childhood. But things started going wrong from the start.

I had way too much meat to deal with,” said O’Connell.

The pressure cooker was too small. O’Connell had already browned the meat in a cast iron pan. So he decided to shortcut the process. Once the jars sealed airtight he would take them out of the pressure cooker and start a new batch. The next day, he heard a pop in the pantry.

“Which I remember as a child was the signal for you’ve lost the seal,” said O’Connell.

O’Connell found the jar with the popped seal, put it in the fridge and ate it the next day. He says it was delicious. The following week he heard another lid pop. Just as he had before, O’Connell found the jar and stuck it in the fridge. And a few days later he ate it for supper.

“This time, it didn’t work out,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell had an upset stomach in the night, but he didn’t connect it to having eaten the meat. He says growing up, he didn’t know anyone who got food poisoning from home canned foods.

At the hospital, once doctors ruled out a stroke, O’Connell was sent home. But he was back in the hospital a few hours later. Now he was having difficulty swallowing. The next morning, Mother’s Day, O’Connell’s daughter, Kelly Weisfield, drove to Olympia to see her dad.

“His voice was very slurred and his eyelids were droopy, but he was sitting up in bed and he was communicative,” Weisfield said.

As the day progressed though, O’Connell’s condition got markedly worse.

“By now, my eyes were closed. My strength—it was just amazing how quickly that went,” O’Connell said.

His breathing was getting shallow. Daughter Weisfield was frustrated with the lack of answers and scared. She called a doctor she knew, a neurosurgeon. He ran through a short checklist of things to rule out. That list included a disease first identified in the 18th century: botulism. Weisfield looked it up online.

“It just made the hair on the back of my neck stand up because it was every single symptom just laid out exactly what my dad was experiencing,” she said.

Botulism is a paralyzing illness caused by what Centers for Disease Control calls the most potent toxin known to science. It’s rare; there were only 20 foodborne cases nationwide in 2011, just one in Washington state last year.

Improperly home canned foods are the leading culprit, especially those low in acid like green beans and, yes, meats. Weisfield called her mom who had just left the hospital.

“And I said, ‘Mom, turn around. You got to go back and tell them to look into this,’” Weisfield said.

Weisfield was relieved, but also terrified that it was too late. Her father could hardly move now. He was having more and more difficulty breathing. The hospital had parked a ventilator outside his room. Weisfield didn’t know what to tell her 10-year-old son, who is very close to his grandfather.

“First thing Connor said was, ‘Are we still going to go on our fishing trip?’ And I could never answer him, because I didn’t know,” she said.

The doctors didn’t even wait to confirm botulism. They ordered a dose of anti-toxin from the CDC. Now the medical mystery was solved. But how did O’Connell get botulism?

Remember he stopped cooking the jars of elk meat when he heard the seals lock in place. Washington State University food safety expert Zena Edwards says that was O’Connell’s nearly fatal mistake.

“All that indicated was it had now become an anaerobic environment, an oxygen-free environment,” Edwards said.

And that’s the strange thing about the bacteria that causes botulism. It thrives when deprived of oxygen. By shortcutting the cooking time, O’Connell failed to kill the bacteria. Instead, he sealed it into the perfect environment for it to produce the poisonous toxin.

Edwards says what happened to O’Connell reaffirms two cardinal rules of home canning: “plan before you can” and “when it doubt, throw it out.”

After receiving the anti-toxin, O’Connell transferred to Swedish Hospital in Seattle for rehab. It took just days for the Botulism to paralyze O’Connell. The recovery would be painfully slow.

“My eyes were the first thing to come back. I still walk with difficulty and use a cane. I have no taste with the exception of chocolate, so I buy chocolate ensure, chocolate mints and night before last, I found where they sell chocolate wine so I had some of that, too,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell doesn’t know if or when he’ll get his taste back. Before the botulism, he was fit and active—a hunter and avid hiker. His daughter says it’s hard to see her dad like this.

“I’m so grateful that he’s made it through. And I’m so sad that he’s gone through all this, and he’s not the same,” Weisfield said.

O’Connell was able to keep that promise he’d made months ago to his grandson to go fishing together on the upper Columbia River. As for future home canning projects, his family has made it clear that’s not going to happen.

Three cases of botulism from home preserved foods

There are three confirmed cases of botulism from home preserved foods.  Unfortunately, there is no additional information regarding the circumstances.

With an increasing number of people preserving their own foods, we unfortunately expect that there will be these types of incidents.  It is important that consumers practice 'approved procedures' when canning foods.  Penn State has a dedicated website for support - http://extension.psu.edu/food-safety/food-preservation. 

In our interactions with consumers, we still find that people are using improper techniques (canning in the oven, not using a pressure cooker for low acid foods, etc).   Where do they get this dangerous information -
- word-of-mouth from a friend - "I know this guy who cans in the oven all the time"
- the memory of what they think their grandmother used to do - "I recall my grandmother never using a pressure cooker to can green beans"
- some misguided blogger on the web

Do not put yourself, your family, or your friends in danger, use proper, approved procedures for preserving food.

County News Release
http://www.deschutes.org/Media-Releases/Botulism-in-3-People-Caused-by-Home-Canned-Food.aspx
Deschutes County Oregon -- 7/2/2012 --

The Oregon State Public Health Lab has confirmed that three Central Oregon residents,who were hospitalized, contracted botulism at a private barbeque. Deschutes County Health Services has conducted an investigation and implicated home-canned food as the source of the Botulism. Final testing results are pending. This was an isolated incident and Deschutes County Health Services has notified all involved individuals. Botulism in NOT spread person to person so there is no risk to the general public as a result of these cases.

This is a good reminder of the importance of following strict hygienic procedures to reduce contamination of foods while canning as well as obtaining the necessary pressure when canning to effectively destroy bacteria and prevent botulism. Detailed instructions on safe home canning can be obtained from Oregon State extension services at the following website: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/fch/food-preservation. Oregon Residents can also call the Food Preservation and Food Safety Hotline at (800) 354-7319 to talk to trained OSU Extension staff.

There are three primary types of botulism:

1. Foodborne botulism is caused by eating foods that contain the botulism toxin and is often associated with home-canned foods that have been improperly processed. Ingesting botulism toxin can lead to illness within a few hours- to days. Foodborne botulism is often caused from home-canned foods with low acid content such as asparagus, green beans, beets and corn.

2. Wound botulism is caused by toxin produced from a wound infected with the bacterium. Wound botulism can be prevented by promptly seeking medical care for infected wounds and by not using contaminated injectable drugs.

3. Infant botulism is caused by consuming the spores of the botulinum bacteria, which then grow in the intestines and release toxin. Honey can contain spores of the botulinum bacteria and has been a source of infection for infants. Children less than 12 months old should not be fed honey. Generally, honey is safe for people one year of age and older.

The classic symptoms of botulism include double or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth, and muscle weakness. These are all symptoms of the muscle paralysis caused by the bacterial toxin. If untreated, these symptoms may progress to cause paralysis of the arms, legs, trunk and breathing muscles. In foodborne botulism, symptoms generally begin 12 to 36 hours after eating a contaminated food, but they can occur as early as six hours or as late as 10 days later.

In the United States an average of 145 cases of botulism are reported each year. Of these, approximately 15 percent are foodborne, 65 percent are infant botulism, and the rest are wound botulism.

Nationally, outbreaks of foodborne botulism involving two or more people occur most years and are usually caused by eating contaminated home-canned foods.