Police said 42-year-old Carpenter was angry over a complaint she filed at school and wanted revenge on the principal.
The sub allegedly was witnessed in rubber gloves and a face mask around 6:30 a.m. Dec. 1 at Urfer Park putting fecal matter around the pavilion, which was reserved for the birthday party of the principal’s 6-year-old daughter.
Officers spoke to the principal who explained she had an ongoing dispute with a substitute teacher, who taught her daughter’s class. The detectives went to the home of Carpenter, who allegedly confessed to the act of revenge, officials said.
She told officers she flung the poop around the pavilion because she was upset over how a complaint she filed at school was being handled and wanted to disrupt the birthday festivities.
The unidentified pooper was filmed relieving himself on the floor of the Safeway supermarket in San Francisco’s Marina District around 7:45 am last Sunday morning.
He was snapped defecating by a stunned shopper called Mike, who uploaded the photos to social media afterwards. The incident happened close to an aisle full of cleaning products, even though the Safeway has a restroom that is free for shoppers to use.
Mike says the pooper left the Safeway shortly after – apparently without paying for the toilet paper he’d used – before wandering into a nearby Starbucks. His behavior was met with disgust by fellow shoppers, one of whom told KRON he was ‘lost for words.’
We have an abundance of excellent public toilets in Australia – or at least Brisbane.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports on October 25, 2018, at 2:15 a.m., a woman aged 30 years and her mother, aged 55 years, both of Egyptian descent, arrived at an emergency department in New Jersey in hypotensive shock after 16 hours of abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. The daughter also reported blurry vision and double vision (diplopia), shortness of breath, chest pain, and difficulty speaking. She appeared lethargic and had ophthalmoplegia and bilateral ptosis. Both women were admitted to the hospital. The mother improved after fluid resuscitation, but the daughter required vasopressor support in the intensive care unit. Although the mother did not have evidence of cranial nerve involvement on admission, during the next 24 hours, she developed dysphagia and autonomic dysfunction with syncope and orthostasis and was transferred to the intensive care unit as her symptoms progressively worsened similar to those of her daughter.
Two days before admission, both women had eaten fesikh, a traditional Egyptian fish dish of uneviscerated gray mullet that is fermented and salt-cured. Fesikh has been linked to foodborne botulism, including a large type E outbreak in Egypt in 1993 (1). The Egyptian Ministry of Health has since issued public health warnings regarding fesikh before Sham el-Nessim, the Egyptian holiday commemorating the beginning of spring, during which fesikh is commonly prepared and eaten.* Foodborne botulism outbreaks associated with fesikh and similar uneviscerated salt-cured fish have also occurred in North America (2); two outbreaks occurred among persons of Egyptian descent in New Jersey in 1992 (3) and 2005 (4).
Botulism, a paralytic illness caused by botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), was suspected because of the reported exposure to fesikh along with symptoms of ophthalmoplegia, bilateral ptosis, dysarthria, and autonomic dysfunction. Per New Jersey Reporting Regulations (NJAC 8:57),† these suspected illnesses were immediately reported to the New Jersey Department of Health. After consultation with CDC, heptavalent botulism antitoxin was released by CDC and administered to both patients within approximately 24 hours of arrival at the hospital. The daughter’s symptoms improved, and she was weaned off vasopressors. Both patients survived following intensive care for 2 days and total hospitalization of 7 days each.
CDC tested serum obtained before antitoxin administration. Serum from the daughter tested positive for BoNT type E by the BoNT Endopep-MS assay (5); the mother’s serum tested negative. A leftover sample of the consumed fesikh also tested positive for BoNT type E and Clostridium botulinum type E.
Interviews conducted by the Communicable Disease Service at the New Jersey Department of Health revealed that two fresh mullets purchased by the patients’ neighbor at a local Asian market were used to prepare the fesikh. The mother salt-cured and fermented the mullet, leaving the fish uneviscerated and wrapped in plastic in the kitchen for 20 days at ambient temperature. The mother confirmed that she previously used the same method of preparation in Egypt with no deviation in techniques or steps.
These cases illustrate the importance of early recognition and treatment of botulism. Botulism can be fatal, typically from respiratory failure, and treatment delays can result in increased mortality and worsened overall outcomes (6). These cases also highlight the role of uneviscerated, salt-cured fish dishes as potential vehicles for foodborne botulism. C. botulinum spores are ubiquitous in marine environments, and traditional methods of home preparation for these dishes might support conditions that are favorable for toxin production (i.e. anaerobic conditions) (2). Neither of these patients had previously heard of botulism. Risk communication via public awareness campaigns, as has been conducted by the Egyptian Ministry of Health to discourage fesikh consumption, might be indicated in the United States; engagement with Egyptian communities in the United States might provide insights into additional prevention strategies to decrease the risk for foodborne botulism from fesikh and other uneviscerated, salt-cured fish products.
Jessica Grose of The New York Times writes that “two days before my 37th birthday, I received the following bone-chilling email from my daughter’s elementary school: “Dear Families, We wanted to inform you that we had an unusually high number of students across all grades suffering from symptoms of a stomach bug.”
One day before my 37th birthday, I had a parent-teacher conference in that building of horrors.
You know where this is going: I spent my birthday eve in the local E.R., getting fluids and the anti-nausea medication Zofran pumped into my veins. “You need to break the barf cycle,” the attending doctor said.
The ailment sweeping my kid’s school and my intestines was norovirus, a highly contagious stomach bug that causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. There are multiple strains of norovirus, so you can catch it more than once in a season — and it’s basically hanging around all winter, from November to April.
Norovirus can live on surfaces for days and, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people infected with norovirus shed billions of virus particles for two weeks or more; just a few particles can make other people sick. That’s why norovirus outbreaks have caused an elementary school in Seattle and 40 schools in Colorado to close briefly in recent weeks — officials wanted to stop the spread, and keeping sick kids away from each other and the building can help.
CDC and FDA both posted an updates to their Romaine/E. coli O157:H7 outbreak pages yesterday that shows another 36 ill folks with an onset date as late as December 1, and that one of the growers associated with an unopened bag of Fresh Express Romaine also supplied Romaine in other outbreaks that FDA is investigating.
FDA says: These outbreaks are each caused by strains that are different from each other and different from the larger outbreak. One of the additional outbreaks, in Washington state, is potentially linked to romaine lettuce. The other outbreak, with cases in the U.S. and Canada, is linked to Fresh Express Sunflower Crisp Chopped Salad Kits.
I had a couple of conversations about these outbreaks today and someone asked about why Salinas Romaine has been linked to outbreaks around the same time frame in 2017, 2018 and this year.
Essentially asking whether I had any theories on why the risk seems to go up around the time that the season is nearing its end and supply is transitioning elsewhere. Is it because people are more lax about food safety around this time? Something else?
My answer: Not sure, but I think that’s exactly what everyone is trying to figure out.
I warn people about fresh basil, but they just call me crazy, although I’m the one with the PhD in food stuff.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported at the end of Sept there were 241 confirmed cases in 5 states and was linked to fresh basil from Siga Logistics de RL de CV of Morelos, Mexico.
This outbreak appears to be over.
Sorry it takes me longer to report these things, but I don’t get paid and my brain drifts.
Diagnostic Laboratory Practices Tool: Find out how diagnostic testing practices in FoodNet’s surveillance area have changed over time for 10 pathogens: Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium *, Cyclospora, Listeria, norovirus, Salmonella, STEC, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia.
Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) Surveillance Tool: HUS is a life-threatening condition, most often triggered by STEC infection. See how rates of pediatric HUS and STEC infection have changed in FoodNet’s surveillance area since 1997.
My friend Ronald Doering, the first president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, writes persuasively in this Food in Canada column last week:
In September, there were several media reports of a survey by 3M that found that 32 per cent of Canadians are “skeptical of science.” The results were universally treated as “worrisome,” “alarming” and “depressing” because such a lack of trust in scientists might skew policy discussions to non-science considerations (bad) and perhaps, as well, undermine funding for scientists (very bad).
As readers of this column over the years will know, I have a different view. While, of course, it depends on what you mean by “science,” generally my opinion is that everyone should be more skeptical of science. I’m not saying that science is not important. CFIA scientists and their 10 laboratories are critical to the work of the agency. We can never have too much good science.
What I am saying is that there are many reasons why ordinary citizens, and especially consumers, should always be skeptical of science:
Most science is a lot more uncertain than is usually acknowledged. In food and nutrition science, for example, you name the issue and I can give you conflicting science. Over the years in this column, I have demonstrated vastly conflicting science on, for example, genetically engineered foods, food irradiation, the safety of BPA in food packaging, the safety of farmed salmon, the safety of water fluoridation and food additives. We have seen that Canada’s top two scientists on the safe level of salt in our diets disagree so intensely that they routinely resort to vicious name-calling. Canada and the U.S. consider the science on folic acid so clear that they require mandatory fortification of certain foods, while every EU country interprets the science to be so dangerous that they refuse to fortify; both groups insist their policy is “science-based.” It is illegal to sell raw milk in Canada and Australia but legal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; both sides insist their policies are “science-based.” Nutrition science vacillates wildly. With such pervasive uncertainty, isn’t it just common sense to be skeptical?
Consumers get their science information on food and nutrition from newspapers, magazines, television and social media, none of which have trained science reporters anymore and all of which trade in alarmist “investigations,” food company bashing, celebrity advice and 45-second clips. Most consumers cannot understand most food labels. Health claims are more about marketing than health. Scientific illiteracy and innumeracy abound. As Mark Twain observed, if you don’t read magazines and newspapers you are uninformed, and if you do, you are misinformed. (Of course, this column is an exception). In the face of such widespread misinformation, isn’t it just common sense to be skeptical?
One of the most pervasive myths is that science and policy can be separated. When I was president of Canada’s largest science-based regulator, I dealt regularly with scientists who were seemingly unaware of how much their science advice was imbued with unstated policy considerations. Policy implications enter into the risk assessment at virtually every stage of the process. Moreover, in our system, scientists don’t make policy. After the scientist does the science-based risk assessment, elected politicians and their senior advisors carry out the policy-based risk management responsibility by weighing the science with the economic, political, legal, environmental, and ethical considerations. This is not the politicization of science; this is evidence-based policymaking. These two separate functions are often conflated and the outcome presented as driven purely by science. Isn’t it just common sense to be skeptical of this “science?”
A scientist friend recently highlighted another reason to be skeptical. The university system still insists that professors publish or perish, which accounts for why so much published science is both unread and unreadable, contributing nothing of value to the public that pays for it. It is certainly common sense, he says, to be skeptical of this science. Given the growing recognition of the importance of diet for health and the growing threat of foodborne illness, we need more and better science to aid in policymaking. Having said that, the public should always be skeptical of the science that comes their way.
It’s 36 C in Brisbane, there is smoke everywhere from the bush fires, and we were all up at 4:30 a.m. — when it gets light here — so Sorenne, who turned 11-years-old today could be on the ice at 5:45 a.m.
Take ice when you can get it.
This isn’t Canada.
But I didn’t have the stamina to go to her practice or birthday party this afternoon at a pool (Amy is doing the heaving lifting these days).
So I’m going to stop writing for barfblog.com for awhile, maybe write a book, maybe hang out more with my kid before she’s on to her next adventure.
It’s been 14 years of blogging and 26 years of news.
I’ve said it before, but I can feel the effects of my brain going away and just can’t do it right now.
Upper right is the card my mother sent Sorenne. Mom spent a few decades at the arena.
Yet we are the coolest place in Australia today, where many cities are in the mid-40s C.
