9-27-06
Melissa Plantenga is a detective of sorts. She follows a trail of clues to find the culprits in outbreaks of food-borne illnesses.
Plantenga, a 2000 graduate of the Environmental Health and Safety program in OSU's College of Health and Human Sciences and now an epidemiologist for the Oregon Public Health Division, was the first person to connect bagged spinach with the current outbreak of E. coli around the country.
As of Tuesday, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 183 cases of illness due to E. coli O157:H7. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined that the spinach implicated in the outbreak was grown in three California counties: Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara. The FDA has advised consumers not to purchase or consume fresh spinach if they can't verify that it was grown in areas other than those three California counties.
But the spinach link came from the sleuthing of Plantenga. The search for the cause began after five cases of the E. coli strain were reported in Oregon during the last week of August.
Plantenga telephoned the Oregon victims and went through a scattershot survey of 400 questions, looking for a common thread. Bagged salad was on her list of questions.
"I have had very few people ever say yes, they'd eaten bagged greens," Plantenga told The Oregonian newspaper in Portland. "But the demographic of the victims being women and over the age of 20 suggested a produce item."
After hearing from four of the victims that they'd eaten bagged spinach, health officials in other states with outbreaks were contacted. When those states checked, they found a pattern. A large number of the victims had eaten bagged spinach.
After that, stores and restaurants moved quickly to take spinach off their shelves and menus.
This isn't the first time Plantenga, who was Melissa Scroggins when she attended OSU, has tracked down the cause of an illness outbreak. Two years ago she tracked a salmonella-poisoning outbreak to raw almonds, causing Paramount Farms Inc., the nation's largest almond grower, recall 13 million pounds of nuts.
While at OSU, Plantenga did an internship with the Public Health Division in the CDC's Emerging Infections Program that convinced her she wanted to work in the field. She is still with that program.
"Working for public health, what intrigued me was the outbreaks, the fingerprints, what was making people sick," she told The Oregonian. "I just knew I wanted to work here."
Scientist's dogged work uncovered E. coli culprit
Monday, Sept. 25 story in The Oregonian
Oregon sleuth solves E. coli mystery
Tuesday, Sept. 19 story in The Oregonian
