Food Contamination Incident Calls for Health Dept. Exam
Every year food contaminated in restaurant fires finds its way into nursing homes, hospitals, institutions, and even into fire stations when unsuspecting fire fighters allow such food to be carried off the fireground before health inspectors arrive. It is important that fire fighters become aware of the special hazards and problems associated with restaurant and food service facility fires.
By knowing the problems created during and after these fires, fire fighters can provide for their own safety and better protect the public from consuming contaminated food. Often the products of combustion provide visual or sensory warnings to a fire fighter. By remembering the nature of a particular fire and the methods used to extinguish it, the fire fighter has a special role in assisting other government agents or fire investigators. That role includes the prompt extinguishment of the fire, preservation of the fire scene, and being a material witness to the fire scene.
Products of combustion are particularly hazardous to food—as well as to fire fighters. The increased use of synthetics presents its own problems in producing toxic gases during fires. Interior furnishings, such as draperies, rugs and upholstered and other furniture, may be made from a variety of synthetic materials. Electrical appliances often have plastic parts while furnishings may consist of veneers coated with flammable waxes, lacquers and paints. The burning of these materials releases toxic gases.
Numerous contaminants
Restaurants also use natural materials, such as silk, cotton, wood pulp, barn siding, rubber and wool, in wall hangings, rugs, draperies, and furniture. These also produce toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, ammonia and sulfur dioxide. These gases can alter the chemical composition of exposed food products and contaminate the food.
Smoke may be laden with organic irritants, such as acetic acid and formaldehyde, which can attack the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract. In many cases, sooty smoke leaves a thick, black coating on everything, alerting local health officials to the contamination of food products, particularly in absorbent containers or exposed containers.
In many other cases, however, evidence of contamination is not apparent to visual inspection. While maximum levels have been set for certain poisonous or deleterious substances in human food, studies have not been done to determine the effects of products of combustion. The complexity of the smoke problem is such that a single material can form numerous different compounds in smoke under varying conditions of temperature, humidity, pressure and other factors. We know that many of these compounds can pose a serious health threat to the unprotected fire fighter during the course of fire suppression, but their long-term effects and their exact absorption ability into unprotected foods is just not fully known.
Role of health officials
Because most contaminants are colorless and odorless and must be detected by laboratory analysis, health codes often give health officials authority to declare exposed food products “unprotected” and therefore unwholesome. Health officials will recommend voluntary destruction of the affected food by owners or will detain it, withdraw it from sale and test it at state laboratories. Since most foods do not have an unwholesome appearance when affected by smoke products, and many food products would spoil before laboratory testing could be completed, most owners in Montgomery County, Md., comply by voluntarily destroying food on the premises.
In some rare instances, however, the owners either knowingly or innocently circumvent health official efforts to remove contaminated food. In some cases, the owners were attempting to salvage food products for later use. This should be prevented by the fire department, which can secure the scene until a health official arrives to make a determination.
It is particularly important to the health official to see the actual conditions under which food was stored and exposed. Fire officials can be instrumental in noting whether refrigerator doors were opened any time during the extinguishment or overhaul of the fire, exposing food to the toxic products in smoke.
Donating damaged food
Some owners realize that food will be declared unfit for use in their restaurant, or unsalable after a market or warehouse fire, but nevertheless they donate damaged packages to organizations, such as their local fire department. Fire fighters who accept such goods may unwittingly expose themselves to immediate food poisoning, or other longterm deleterious effects, such as chemical poisoning. One interesting sidelight is that the symptoms for many gastrointestinal diseases, such as vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headaches, cramps, muscular aches and weakness, are similar to those of carbon monoxide poisoning. Thus it is sometimes not known whether Fire fighters who become ill are suffering from food poisoning or carbon monoxide poisoning.
Unfortunately, some of these contaminated food products also find their way into institutions, such as nursing homes and children’s homes, where the residents are more susceptible to illness and are unaware of the potential danger. In a 1979 report to Congress, the General Accounting Office charged that nine out of 17 convalescent hospitals and nursing homes inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture had purchased potentially adulterated food or food in defective containers from food salvage operations.
In Montgomery County, the fire marshal’s office has taken steps to ensure that health officials are notified promptly. Health investigators are on 24-hour call and have pagers on the same frequencies as the fire investigators. As soon as a fire department determines that it has a working fire, the fire investigator and health officials are promptly notified by communications headquarters. In this way, the health department investigator can arrive on the scene in time to make evaluations of fire-damaged food.
Assessing contamination
The method of extinguishment can also lead to the contamination of food, and therefore it is important that fire fighters be alert to the methods and products used to extinguish a fire and to advise health officials who arrive on the scene.
The most common and most useful fire extinguishing agent is, of course, water. All open food products. or products in absorbent containers which were not initially contaminated by smoke particles and toxic gases would become contaminated after contact with water that passed through an atmosphere of toxic gases and particles.
It becomes more difficult to assess the damage to sealed containers, such as metal cans, which can be “reconditioned” under certain circumstances. Health officials should be alerted to the use of wetting agents, since such an application would affect the ability to recondition certain canned products. Cans which were dented on the seams during fire fighting efforts or overhaul must be discarded due to possible leaks. Cans with environmental pop tops— required in Montgomery County— cannot be adequately cleaned and therefore must be destroyed.
One factor which is often overlooked but which can be a source for allowing major contamination of food products is excessive heat. Health officials often lack the expertise to determine the maximum temperatures reached in a room during a fire. Fire officials can assist with their evaluation. If cans do not show evidence of swelling or charring, it may not be readily evident that contamination of products has occurred.
Fire officers on the scene can advise health investigators whether hood and duct protection systems activated and whether dry chemical or other hand extinguishers were used. This information is important to the health official to assess chemical contamination from the products in these extinguishers, and to check for dry chemical residues.
