Food Safety: When the Lights Go Out

To the Editor, Climate change, political instability, and war have made the occurrence of power outages a more frequent occurrence. Previously, there have been several reports of electricity blackouts in major cities in North America. The most prominent incident occurred in August 2003 when a blackout powercut affected an area, with a population of approximately 50 million people over eight states, from east of New York, north to Toronto, and west to Detroit, Michigan.[1] To date, there have been few reports examining outbreaks or increases in sporadic cases of food poisoning following such power outages. Floret and colleagues describe the lack of reported outbreaks of communicable infectious diseases following several geophysical disasters including tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, etc.[2] These authors concluded that the occurrence of epidemics following such geophysical disasters is rare. Here, we wish to report on the occurrence of gastrointestinal disease in adults and in children under 2 years of age following a major disruption of electricity supply in Northern Ireland with a population of approximately 1.6 million people, following a major storm of Boxing Day 1998. The winds recorded backed south-easterly for a time and then increased to Strong and then to Gale Force around mid-day. The winds recorded at the Met Eireann station at Malin Head, Co. Donegal, were classified as Hurricane Force 12. This was the worst storm in Northern Ireland since records began. As a consequence of the storm, major damage was inflicted on the Northern Ireland Electricity Grid with the reporting of 3976 faults. As a result of this, considerable numbers of households were left without electricity ranging from 0 to 3 h to >72 h. Eighty-one percent of homes had their supplies restored within 24 h leaving 19% who were without electricity for longer than 24 h.[3] Food poisoning in adults and gastroenteritis in children under 2 years old were retrospectively examined. In adults, there was a mean increase of 61.4% of reported cases of food poisoning, during weeks 51, 52, and week 1, in comparison with the 2 flanking years, i.e., 1997 and 1999. There was no increase in gastroenteritis in children under 2 years during the storm period, in comparison with similar periods in 1997 and 1999. Additionally, there were no reported outbreaks during this period, and we believe that the increased food poisoning reports in adults reflect unrelated sporadic cases. This report highlights the potential consequences of food poisoning whenever the power supply is interrupted for a significant period of time due to problems with the storage of food in an emergency situation. Our report highlights the need for effective preparedness for food safety concerns during power outages. Emergency contingency plans should be aware of several sources of resource materials.[4-7] In conclusion, our observations further help define changing trends in communicable infectious diseases brought about by power loss due to a weather-related geophysical event. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.