The Bacteria with the Lowest Infectious Dose to cause Meat Food Poisoning

In this paper we will investigate the minimal infectious dose of three different common forms of bacteria that cause meat food poisoning. For E.coli it was found that the infectious dose given the minimal inoculum size of 1 bacterium was 6.28 x1057 bacteria cells. For Campylobacter jejuni the infectious dose was 2.88 x1044 bacteria cells and for Listeria this value was 2.41 x10462. Therefore Campylobacter jejuni was found to have the lowest infected dose that causes the symptoms of food poisoning

Effects of Dumping Pig Manure into a Lake –The Simpsons Movie

This paper examines the environmental effects of disposing a silo of pig manure into a body of water the size of a lake. It was calculated that the concentration of manure once dispersed in the lake would be 1.3 g m-3. From the qualitative research it was found that eutrophication would occur and lead to effects that would cause damage to the organisms of the lake. Observable changes such as colour change of the water would also take longer to occur than suggested in the movie. This also applies to the potential genetic effects which would only affect aquatic organisms such as fish, and would take at least 1 month to become observable

The Most Toxic Component of Chili Con Carne

In this paper, the toxicity of the three main ingredients chili peppers (capsicum), kidney beans and mince in the popular dish Chili Con Carne were investigated. It was found that all three components caused similar symptoms but had different measures of toxicity. Capsicum has a LD50 of 161.2 mg/kg in rats and 118.8 mg/kg in mice. Kidney beans have a hemagglutinin unit of between 20,000-70,000 hau and Salmonella poisoning in mince can be caused by as few as 4.89x1013 bacteria (assuming un-limiting conditions). As the measures of toxicity could not be compared, the most harmful ingredient was deemed to be raw/undercooked meat as it could lead to Salmonella poisoning which can result in typhoid fever, found to cause around 500,000 deaths per year.