Improperly canned food is suspected of causing the Lancaster botulism outbreak. The Ohio Department of Health says it has narrowed the search for the source of the toxin to a salad served this past weekend at a church potluck. One person has died, 18 people are hospitalized and two dozen others are being monitored after eating the tainted food at Cross Pointe Free Will Baptist Church last Sunday. Doctor Andrew Murry, an infectious-disease expert at Fairfield Medical Center, says an antitoxin was sent from the Centers for Disease Control and distributed early Wednesday to the hospitals treating the patients. Murry has a message for the rest of the 50 to 60 people who attended the dinner.
Local and state health workers are interviewing those who attended and are searching the church's trash to determine what might have caused the outbreak. The Fairfield County coroner's office says the 55-year-old woman who died had underlying health conditions that made her more vulnerable to the illness. Those hospitalized for treatment range in age from 9 to 87. The CDC says 145 people contract botulism in the United States each year, and 15 percent of the cases are food-borne. The percentage of people who die of botulism has fallen in the past 50 years to 3 percent.
