Word: bacterias
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Rondle's theory grew out of a chance conversation with a pilot friend, who asked if the venting of dirty water from handbasins in aircraft lavatories during flight (a common airline practice) could spread disease-causing bacteria. Intrigued, Rondle decided to investigate. He picked cholera as a potential airborne culprit because public health agencies keep close tabs on the disease. Thus when he traced regular aircraft routes between Calcutta, where cholera is endemic, and Western Europe, he found that the unexplained cholera cases had invariably occurred along or near these pathways...
...earth? Rondle and his colleagues simulated such air drops in their lab, subjecting V. cholerae to rapid freezing in droplets of water, followed by a quick thaw. Result: the durable bugs not only survived but actually flourished. Indeed the tests indicated that even a relatively small quantity of bacteria from, for example, an aircraft washbasin could be lethal. Says Rondle: "When they reach the ground they can get into milk, soup, or dirty water, and all it requires is two mouthfuls of the fluid they have entered for whoever drinks it to be infected with cholera eight hours later...
Rondle concedes that his bacterial "bombs" are still only theoretical, yet he feels that they bear watching. Says he: "If cholera can be spread even only occasionally by effluent from aircraft, then close investigation should be made of the possibility of other bacteria and viruses being spread in a similar...
...Wolfe, then a National Institutes of Health researcher, began working with Nader. Three years later, they collaborated on a letter to the FDA warning that many bottles of intravenous fluid were contaminated with bacteria that had caused 150 cases of infection and nine deaths. They protested that the FDA's proposed solution?continued use of the bottles with added precautions?was shockingly inadequate. Two days later the agency issued a recall of millions of contaminated bottles...
...added that he does not know yet if the strains of the salmonella bacteria at the Union, Winthrop and Kirkland Houses are the same, so he cannot yet determine how the infection spread...