Climate change will increase people’s risk of salmonella poisoning from contaminated food, a new study warns, HealthDay News reports.
Increased humidity will make it more likely that leafy greens, such as lettuce, will suffer from bacterial diseases like leaf spot, researchers reported in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. In turn, those bacterial diseases can help salmonella survive in leafy greens, increasing the risk of food-borne illness in humans, they said.
‘The impact of increased humidity on healthy plants also supports salmonella’s survival on plants, which would make climate change a food safety issue,’ said researcher Jeri Barak, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Salmonella sickens 1.2 million people in the United States every year, researchers noted in background information.
Fresh produce is the most common route of infection because salmonella survives on many crops and persists in soil for extended periods. In lab experiments, researchers varied the timing of exposure to a bacterium that causes leaf spot and to salmonella bacteria in leafy greens.
