mattbcl
10th October 2011, 05:13 PM
I saw this article and it was too good to keep to myself. Thus, I share its contents here and with you all.
Utah inmates stricken with botulism after drinking prison-brewed hooch
by JoNel Aleccia
Three Utah State Prison inmates remained hospitalized in critical condition after they and nine other prisoners were sickened by botulism from a batch of prison-brewed alcohol.
The dozen men fell ill starting Oct. 2 with symptoms that included nausea, vomiting, facial paralysis and blurry vision after drinking a concoction commonly referred to as pruno or jailhouse hooch. As of Friday, five of eight men hospitalized were returned to the general population, said Steve Gehrke, a department of corrections spokesman.
All eight hospitalized prisoners required doses of the botulinum antitoxin from the national supply maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Nicholas Rupp, a spokesman for the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. The other four became ill, but not sick enough to be hospitalized.
The men apparently brewed the contraband alcohol in a plastic bag by combining food hoarded from prison meals, including potatoes, oranges, apples and pineapples, and allowing them to ferment over days. They squeezed the air out of the bag, creating the anaerobic conditions ripe for allowing the neurotoxin produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria to grow.
“It didn’t sound appetizing, based on the description of the odor,” spokesman Rupp said.
This isn’t the first time health officials have recorded outbreaks of jailhouse poisoning from botulism, an often deadly illness, among alcohol-craving prisoners. In 2004 and 2005 in California, five inmates at prisons in Riverside and Monterey became seriously ill after drinking homemade batches of pruno. The culprit in at least one of those cases appeared to be the potato, which likely introduced the botulism bacteria into the illicit alcohol, health officials said.
CDC typically records about 145 cases of botulism a year, with most attributed to cases in infants. About 15 percent come from food, typically vegetables canned improperly at home.
It reminded me of a .gif I crack up at pretty much every time: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/48857962/37194
Utah inmates stricken with botulism after drinking prison-brewed hooch
by JoNel Aleccia
Three Utah State Prison inmates remained hospitalized in critical condition after they and nine other prisoners were sickened by botulism from a batch of prison-brewed alcohol.
The dozen men fell ill starting Oct. 2 with symptoms that included nausea, vomiting, facial paralysis and blurry vision after drinking a concoction commonly referred to as pruno or jailhouse hooch. As of Friday, five of eight men hospitalized were returned to the general population, said Steve Gehrke, a department of corrections spokesman.
All eight hospitalized prisoners required doses of the botulinum antitoxin from the national supply maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Nicholas Rupp, a spokesman for the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. The other four became ill, but not sick enough to be hospitalized.
The men apparently brewed the contraband alcohol in a plastic bag by combining food hoarded from prison meals, including potatoes, oranges, apples and pineapples, and allowing them to ferment over days. They squeezed the air out of the bag, creating the anaerobic conditions ripe for allowing the neurotoxin produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria to grow.
“It didn’t sound appetizing, based on the description of the odor,” spokesman Rupp said.
This isn’t the first time health officials have recorded outbreaks of jailhouse poisoning from botulism, an often deadly illness, among alcohol-craving prisoners. In 2004 and 2005 in California, five inmates at prisons in Riverside and Monterey became seriously ill after drinking homemade batches of pruno. The culprit in at least one of those cases appeared to be the potato, which likely introduced the botulism bacteria into the illicit alcohol, health officials said.
CDC typically records about 145 cases of botulism a year, with most attributed to cases in infants. About 15 percent come from food, typically vegetables canned improperly at home.
It reminded me of a .gif I crack up at pretty much every time: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/48857962/37194