Food Irradiation

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Background

Food irradiation is a promising safe new technology designed to eradicate foodborne pathogens from foods we eat.   Other common methods for keeping the foods we eat safe include pasteurization, pressure cooking, and boiling, baking, or frying.   To preserve freshness and nutritional content, however, it is often desirable to irradiate foods by several methods soon to be mentioned.  

Advantages

The advantages of food irradiation are:          

• disease causing germs are reduced or eliminated.

• foods do not become radioactive.

• dangerous foods do not appear in the foods.

• nutritional value remains essentially unchanged

 

Who would benefit from food irradiation?

Everyone could potentially benefit.   Current standards for protecting the public against foodborne illness are testimony to the fact that more rigorous techniques for sanitizing various foods are still necessary.  Countless diseases including E.Coli 0157:H7, Salmonella, and Campylobacter could be eliminated.   The significance of eradicating these diseases is evident considering that these pathogens alone represent millions of infections and thousands of hospitalizations per year.  

How does irradiation work?

There are three basic technologies by which food irradiation works.   

• gamma rays

• electron beams

• x-rays

          The first technology, gamma rays, use radiation given by a radioactive substance such as cobalt (Co ₆₀) or cesium (Cs ₁₃₇) to zap foods.   High energy radiation given off in the form of gamma particles easily penetrate foods to sterilize them.   The idea of using radiation in such a practice would seem unwise, however, knowledge of the physics surrounding these particles tells us otherwise.   Since no neutrons are emitted from these particular radioactive substances they are relatively safe.   Lending support for this technique is that it is often used to sterilize surgical equipment and has been used without incident for years now.   

          Electron beams work in a different fashion.   Electrons are propelled at high speed out of an electron gun.   Unlike the gamma rays which can penetrate several feet, e-beams can only penetrate several centimeters, thus limiting its usefulness to foods which are not too thick.   Like gamma radiation, e-beam have been successfully used for a number of years.

          The last and newest technology is x-ray irradiation (still in development) which is essentially an oversized x-ray machine, much like the ones used in hospitals to visualize broken bones.   Exposure to both gamma rays and x-rays themselves are harmful, but there this risk is only limited to the process of sterilization and not consumption of the foods.

 

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