Botulism?! I need your help.

[Swerd]

I should add that because you don't yet know what species of bug caused the can to burst, we know nothing about its toxicity, and whether the toxin can be destroyed by heat. Some toxins are heat stable and some are rapidly inactivated by heat. It depends on what species of bug grew in the can.

So play it safe and assume the worst until more facts emerge.

I imagine you and your wife did thoroughly wash your hands after handling those cans. I'm not certain about this, but I believe botulinum toxin does its dirty work only if it gets into your system after eating contaminated food, or is directly injected. If you or your wife were exposed to botulinum toxin yesterday, you would already know there was a problem, so no news is good news. Thank goodness for that.

 

[Audioholics]

In theory, if he boils the crap out of it, it should be safe to eat.

omg, people, it's not like he's living on a desert island... nobody is going to eat anything from that case of food.

Seriously... the can explodes and he's going to boil the others for 10 minutes just to save a few bucks.... or should he scrape the contents off the walls and floor and boil those too? I mean, waste not, want not!

 

[Nomo]

omg, people, it's not like he's living on a desert island... nobody is going to eat anything from that case of food.

Seriously... the can explodes and he's going to boil the others for 10 minutes just to save a few bucks.... or should he scrape the contents off the walls and floor and boil those too? I mean, waste not, want not!

Well, I think we should ask ourselves: What would Tom Hanks do?

 

[Alex2507]

Outside of Swerd and TLS, I don't think anybody here really understood the seriousness and severity of the situation. I think I can speak for everybody in saying that we hope all this blows over like nothing happened.

 

[Swerd]

Outside of Swerd and TLS, I don't think anybody here really understood the seriousness and severity of the situation. I think I can speak for everybody in saying that we hope all this blows over like nothing happened.

Well, nobody is born knowing this stuff. Don't beat yourself up too much. I happened to have learned something about it when I was a grad student, and TLS was an ER doc for years. He must have run into it at one time or another.

Tomorrow & wife are both OK. No one is in the hospital or lying twitching on the kitchen floor . I think he was able to sort through the serious and silly advice he got.

I got to admit, when you first hear about it, exploding soup cans does seem funny. It stops being funny on rare occasion when someone dies because of it.

Apparently, Tomorrow's exploding soup cans have gotten the intense interest of Costco (where he bought the soup), Campbell's Soup Co., and the FDA. No one yet knows if it is botulism or something less dangerous, but they'll probably soon know.

 

[mike c]

here's to Tomorrow getting some money from Costco for his bad experience

(don't forget about me RJ buddy)

 

[majorloser]

Outside of Swerd and TLS, I don't think anybody here really understood the seriousness and severity of the situation. I think I can speak for everybody in saying that we hope all this blows over like nothing happened.

Actually, I do understand about the dangers from ingestion of botulism. It's kind of my job. (besides sitting at my desk screwing around on the forum)

The main thing is to clean the area that came into contact with a bleach solution. A simple 1 part household bleach to 10 parts water will be sufficient (6,000 ppm chlorine solution). Household bleach contains 6% available chlorine or 60,000 ppm solution. This is what most labs use to clean and disinfect. Spray the area down till it's wet and let it sit for a few minutes

It takes only 5.0 ppm (mg/L) of chlorine to eliminate the neurotoxin in drinking water. Killing the organism requires a much lower dosage.

Yeah, things have changed in my business since 911. They actually make us think about bio-terrorist attacks.

 

[Alex2507]

It's kind of my job. (besides sitting at my desk screwing around on the forum)

Excellent! I laughed right out loud at that one.