In addition to shark attacks and boredom-related deaths due to mid-season baseball, the summer months are the time of food poisoning. If you live in Florida or California, you should be especially vigilant, as you are susceptible to all three (the most baseball teams, the most shark-infested beaches, and—according to the CDC—the most restaurant outbreaks of food poisoning, with a combined 143 in 2007).
In all, the CDC estimates that food-borne diseases every year cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths (salmonella alone costs the United States upwards of $5 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity).
One can only imagine the sheer volume of liquid effluvium generated by these 76 million people.
Actually we can do better than only imagining: a large tank truck of the kind commonly used to transport gasoline has a capacity of around 6,000 gallons; taking a conservative estimate of 0.5 gallons of effluvium per sickened person results in over 6,000 gasoline tankers per year filled with human waste materials due to food poisoning. No, no—no need to thank me.
Especially virile are the days surrounding the 4th of July—heat-speeded bacteria blooms, the ubiquity of meat products, and the overall unsanitary conditions of Uncle Sam’s barbecue argue for renaming the event Uncle Salmonella’s.
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