05 November 2012

Waste in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy

Men dispose of shopping carts full of food damaged by Hurricane Sandy at the Fairway supermarket in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in New York, on October 31, 2012. The food was contaminated by flood waters that rose to approximately four feet in the store during the storm. 
I fully understand that the storm waters were contaminated by human and industrial waste, but it still seems to me that sealed jars of food could be cleaned and used.  Presumably there's insurance reimbursement, and a tax write-off, and a fear of litigation...  Sigh.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig, from an impressive gallery at The Atlantic.

9 comments:

  1. I have seen what food poisoning can do to a community ravaged by a natural disaster. It's not worth it. Those companies are doing exactly the right thing.

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  2. Would you buy a jar of mayonnaise that was labeled "originally contaminated by industrial pollution, but washed and perfectly safe now"?

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    Replies
    1. Would you allow a physician to perform a procedure on you using an instrument that was previous contaminated by HIV+ secretions and tuberculosis organisms, but has been cleaned and is perfectly safe now? Because that happens every single day.

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    2. If they could properly clean and sterilize the jar... sure. But I don't know of a way to do that. Sterile instruments are cleared of any soft matter, bio burden, then cleaned again, then sterilized. So, I'd use the jar again, once it had been sterilized. But I would not eat what was inside unless the alternative was starvation. Food containers are not built for that kind of assault.

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    3. Aren't most jarred things filled at 160+ degrees? Isn't that how the vacuum seal works? This may be an assumption on my part...

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  3. I would eat a lot of things if the circumstances were different... If I'm starving, and can't get food, any food, even food that might make me sick, is something I would take. Get the food out of the jar, cook it really good, and take my chances.

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  4. The cost to "clean" the food containers would far outstrip the cost to dispose of and import actual safe food.

    I understand the feelings that picture may give you, Stan, but you are missing the reality. After watching cleaners take care of a basement that had a few gallons of raw sewage spray down, you get a respect for how nasty that sort of thing is. Anything that is absorbent gets thrown out. It's a class 3 bio-hazard or something like that.

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  5. The problem is that sorting out the few containers that are not safe is too much work. It is simply not cost efficient to resell these containers.

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