Food poisoning at Japan Air Lines in 1975
| Food poisoning at Japan Air Lines in 1975 | |
|---|---|
 A Boeing 747-200B of Japan Air Lines |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Food poisoning from staphylococci |
| place | Scandinavian airspace |
| date | 3rd February 1975 |
| Fatalities | 0 |
| Survivors | 364 |
| Injured | 197 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type |
 Boeing 747
|
| operator |
 Japan Air Lines
|
| Departure airport |
Tokyo Haneda Airport , Japan
|
| 1. Stopover |
Anchorage Airport , United States
|
| 2. Stopover |
Copenhagen Kastrup Airport , Denmark
|
| Destination airport |
Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport , France
|
| Passengers | 344 |
| crew | 20th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
To mass food poisoning in Japan Airlines occurred on February 3, 1975 aboard a Boeing 747 of Japan Airlines , the flight from Tokyo International Airport via the Airport Anchorage to Kastrup performed. 197 people were poisoned by a meal contaminated with staphylococci . A total of 144 people had to be treated as inpatients in hospitals. It is the most extensive food poisoning ever recorded on board a passenger aircraft.
Airplane and occupants
The incidents took place on board a Boeing 747 operated by Japan Air Lines. The aircraft registration number of the aircraft concerned is not known, but only the two types Boeing 747-100 and Boeing 747-200B are possible.
There were 344 passengers and 20 crew members on board the machine. Most of the passengers who had taken the unscheduled flight consisted of Japanese employees of the Coca-Cola Company and their families, who had won a trip to Paris.
It has not been communicated how many crew members were on board the aircraft. If one assumes, however, that one dish was calculated for each person on board with the meals prepared according to information 364 when determining the needs, after deduction of the 344 passengers, 20 crew members can be assumed.
Flight history
The flight initially led from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Anchorage Airport . Then the Arctic was flown over and a refueling stop was planned at Copenhagen-Kastrup Airport . The last flight segment was supposed to lead to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport .
The flight proceeded without any special incidents until it entered the airspace of Europe. The flight attendants served ham omelets for breakfast 90 minutes before the scheduled landing .
On the approach to Copenhagen-Kastrup Airport and about an hour after breakfast, the passengers developed clinical symptoms such as violent vomiting, stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. A total of 197 people, including 196 passengers and a flight attendant, showed symptoms.
Caring for the victims
Of those affected, 144 had symptoms so severe that they had to be hospitalized in Copenhagen. The 53 less seriously affected patients were treated in makeshift emergency shelters.
Since few of the passengers spoke Danish or English and the doctors did not understand Japanese, Japanese-speaking waiters from restaurants in Copenhagen were called to the hospital to act as translators.
Investigation of the incident
The clinical investigation into the incidents was led by Alaska's Medical Officer Mickey S. Eisenberg.
The Staphylococcus aureus pathogen was detected in the passengers' stomach and stool samples in the laboratory , as well as in 33 different samples of the remaining ham omelets.
The ham was littered with toxins produced by the staph. For this reason, the incubation period after ingesting the pathogens with the meal was extremely short.
Infection of the food
As part of the investigation, the origin of the pathogen was first determined. The investigation focused on the premises of International Inflight Catering , an Anchorage-based subsidiary of Japan Air Lines, where meals were prepared. It was found that three cooks were involved in the preparation of the omelets. The bacteria could be clearly assigned to one of the cooks. The man had open wounds on the index and middle fingers of his right hand. It could be proven that the wounds were infected with staphylococci.
The machine was equipped with four dining trolleys from which 364 meals were served, 40 of them in first class and 108 each from the three trolleys for the main deck. According to Eisenberg, the cook had prepared dishes for three of the four dining trolleys with the infected fingers. He had bandaged the infected fingers, but the management did not check his health, although, as Eisenberg said, they were obliged to do so. The cook also did not report the injuries to his supervisor, as he did not consider them worth mentioning.
The chef had prepared all 40 omelets served in first class, as well as 72 of 108 for the main deck trolley. He also stocked 108 omelets, which were prepared by a second cook and stowed in another food trolley, with ham. Of the 220 meals served from the first three dining trolleys, the cook had prepared 112 himself and touched another 108. According to Eisenberg's hypothesis, 36 people who were served food from one of the front dining trolleys and 108 who were served their dishes from the rear trolley received dishes that were not contaminated.
Spread of the pathogen
According to microbiologists, around 100 pathogens are enough for an outbreak of staphylococcal food poisoning. Eisenberg said the flight food logistics procedures provide ideal conditions for bacteria to multiply and release toxins that lead to severe nausea, severe vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Since the toxins are heat resistant, they survived heating the omelets.
Before being served, the ham and the omelets were around 14 hours room temperature stored and further 14 1 / 2 hours at temperatures of around 10 ° C. If the ham had not been contaminated before being left unrefrigerated for more than 24 hours, there would have been no food poisoning.
The Danish doctors who treated the sick said that most of the sick sat in the front of the machine. This observation corresponded to the distribution pattern of contaminated omelets according to Eisenberg's thesis.
The proportion of passengers who exhibited symptoms of the disease after eating one of the omelets touched by the chef in charge was 86 percent, while it was zero percent for the omelets prepared by the other chef.
Adjustment of the samples
The samples from the stool and vomit from the sick passengers, samples from the leftover food and the samples from the wounds on the cook's fingers all tested positive for the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus . The bacteriophage type and the antibiotic resistance were identical in each case. Staphylococcal enterotoxins were found in the omelets and pieces of ham left behind .
consequences
He took his own life after Japan Air Lines' catering manager Kenji Kuwabara learned that the omelette had been contaminated by his chefs. His death was the only one related to the incident.
Medical accident investigators stressed that people with infected wounds should not cook food and that food should be stored at temperatures low enough to reduce the likelihood of bacteria multiplying.
Eisenberg said it was very lucky that the pilots hadn't eaten from the omelets. Had they done so, they would probably not have been able to land the machine safely as a result. Instead, the pilots' internal clocks hadn't changed, so they ate steaks instead of breakfast. As a result of the incident, the rules on catering for aircraft crews were changed. Eisenberg suggested that the pilots of a machine should each eat different dishes prepared by different chefs. In this way, even in the case of extensive food poisoning, the entire flight crew should be prevented from becoming incapacitated. Since the Japan Airlines incident, it has therefore been customary for two different dishes to be served on passenger flights.
literature
- Lawrence K. Altman: Illness on Japanese let Is Traced to Alaskan Cook . In: The New York Times . February 7, 1975 (English, nytimes.com [accessed May 16, 2019]).
- Mickey S. Eisenberg, Knud Gaarslev, William Brown, Marcus Horwitz, Dianne Hill: Staphylococcal food poisoning aboard a commercial aircraft . In: The Lancet . No. 2 (7935) , September 27, 1975, pp. 595-599 , PMID 51419 (English, thelancet.com [accessed May 16, 2019] abstract).
- Lawrence K. Altman: Who goes first? The story of self-experimentation in medicine. University of California Press, 1998, p. 179 ff.
- Mark Pendegrast: Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. 2010, pp. 134-135 .
- Barbara A. Munce: Inflight Gastroenertitits Significance for Air Crew . In: Cabin Crew Safety . tape 24 , issue 6, November 1989 (English, flightsafety.org [PDF; accessed on May 16, 2019]).