Eight Nome correctional center inmates contracted a strain of E. coli from eating romaine lettuce.
The confirmed cases are the first in Alaska related to a national outbreak.
No other cases have been reported at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center or the rest of Alaska.
“What we’re talking about here is a type of E. coli, a shiga-toxin-producing E. coli. It can be pretty damaging to people,” epidemiologist Louisa Castrodale said. “It can cause some severe illness, vomiting, diarrhea and bloody diarrhea.”
State and national experts continue to investigate more than 50 E. coli cases across 16 states.
By collaborating with those entities, Castrodale said they have determined that the infectious lettuce came from Yuma, Arizona, but don’t know which specific farm.
“We also work very closely … with our partners in Food Safety,” Castrodale said. “The Department of Environmental Conservation, they’re working with FDA and the CDC to help figure out where did this lettuce come from? What farm, can they trace it back? How far can they trace it back?”
Alaska Department of Corrections staff and medical support implemented rigorous hygiene requirements — like more frequent hand-scrubbing — in order to control the outbreak within Anvil Mountain, a spokesman said.
“Outbreaks like this in a prison setting can be a little stressful, because everybody lives so close together; everybody interacts so closely all the time,” Castrodale said. “So we really do have really good medical staff, and really good staff at Anvil, because they had to go into overdrive to make sure that this incident was contained.”
Corrections public information officer Megan Edge said lettuce was taken off the menu temporarily, but Anvil Mountain will start serving the leafy green vegetable from another grower, to avoid further infections.
“we do have a correctional farm out in Mat-Su that we’re getting ready to head into growing season,” Edge said. “That’s always a huge relief for us, because we can take a lot of products that we are growing ourselves and use them at our facilities.”
According to Edge, none of the inmates were hospitalized, and all of them are back within the general population at the correctional facility.
The Center for Disease Control recommends Alaskans avoid eating any romaine lettuce unless you can verify it is not from Yuma, Arizona.
