Hotter ocean temperatures have nearly tripled the incidence of waterborne food illnesses, says the Seattle Times. Roughly a dozen species of vibrio bacteria make people sick from eating undercooked seafood — particularly raw oysters — and from swimming in tainted water. In a study that focused on Europe and the United States, researchers used DNA, a 50-year plankton database, and disease reports to link climate change to an increase in the relative abundance of vibrio. Alaska, for example, never used to see the bacteria, but now cases are occurring for the first time as northern water temperatures increase.
Infections have gone from 390 a year in the late 1990s to an average of 1,030, according to the Center for Disease Control. “It’s a remarkable increase on an annual basis,” said the study’s lead author Rita Colwell, a top microbiologist at the University of Maryland and a former director of the National Science Foundation. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.