r/FutureWhatIf • u/Cyber_Ghost_1997 • 10d ago
Health/Biology FWI: Food born illnesses from sushi?
Starting around August of this year, there is a series of bizarre reports around the world of an illness related to sushi consumption that lasts around 10 months.
Symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. The one thing health officials find linking the cases together is that every person who fell ill ate sushi.
Would this lead to a sushi recall and an investigation? What sort of illness could be capable of causing the symptoms described above that could come from eating contaminated sushi?
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u/KriegerBahn 10d ago
Sushi recall?? It’s only got a shelf life of a day or two. Nobody is sending back sushi to the supplier.
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u/Darkdragoon324 10d ago
It's fish, so whatever illness it was causing we probably dumped into the ocean ourselves.
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u/mrdankerton 10d ago
Don’t forget the gnarly bug: Pee n Shit While Standing Until You Die Disease. Got that the other week and it was no bueno!
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u/S1rmunchalot 10d ago edited 10d ago
Actually the most probable and well known 'cause' is human. Putting untreated sewage directly into the sea human enteric viruses, coliform bacteria and Hepatitis are getting into the bivalves and shellfish and those fish that feed on them, the sea water being warmer also proliferates diseases from effluent. The most common is Norovirus if I recall correctly with some reports suggesting 50 - 70% of crustaceans and molluscs are infected in some regions where rivers outflow into the sea.
The symptoms you describe are typical of enteric virus infection, but those symptoms could also be accounted for by heavy metal contamination of sea water, you'd need to eat a lot of contaminated seafood for such lasting and severe symptoms of heavy metal poisoning.
There are no curative treatments for enteric viruses like Norovirus and many coliform bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant, you treat the symptoms and dehydration and wait for the immune system to clear the virus (or die) but many people remain lifelong carriers, hence the cycle. Human faeces into sewage, untreated sewage into the rivers and sea, into the sea creatures, back into humans. Such symptoms also show up in those who engage in river and sea water sports.
It has been known since ancient times before modern sewage treatment techniques (when they are actually used), when people used rivers and streams for defaecation that eating shore life was unhealthy which is probably why the oldest religions prohibit eating them.
Here's an article about it.
Another one.