Costly Contamination

By comparison with the great influenza epidemics, the plague that hit Minnesota recently was a trivial affair. One hundred and twenty-five people were stricken with nausea and diarrhea after eating in a local restaurant. No one died in the outbreak, but about 50 were sufficiently sick to consult physicians, eleven were afflicted seriously enough to require hospitalization, and many were bedridden for one or more days. Normally, such an outbreak, which was traced to Salmonella bacteria, receives little attention from health authorities.

But researchers from the Center for Dis ease Control in Atlanta and the Minnesota Department of Health studied this one to get an idea of its economic impact. They found that it was expensive indeed. Those who went to the hospital spent $2,965. The restaurant owner lost an estimated $5,000 worth of business as a result, and the investigation cost $2,355. The biggest loss was in wages of those who missed work: $18,413, which pushed the cost of even this mini-epidemic to $28,733.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.