Oystermen Off Louisiana Linked to Illness Outbreak

Oyster fishermen who dumped human waste into Louisiana coastal waters are likely to blame for an outbreak of stomach illness that made at least 179 oyster-eaters sick last winter, the government said Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an investigation after people who ate oysters became sick last December and January in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The tainted oysters were traced to several retailers, wholesalers and fishermen, a clue that they were contaminated before they reached shore.

The CDC ruled out recreational boaters as the source, saying they were infrequent in December, and found that some fishermen frequently dumped their own waste overboard.

The president of the Louisiana Oyster Dealers and Growers Assn. said recreational boaters should not have been ruled out and that fishermen were “an easy target.”

“But I will definitely accept some blame,” said Al Sunseri. “It’s not like we want these outbreaks to happen. Any time you have an outbreak like this, it’s bad publicity.”

People who work on oyster boats and oil rigs are supposed to store their waste in a sealed container and dump it in a sewage facility at a marina. Oyster boats often use private docks that don’t have sewage stations, and many public marinas don’t either. The temptation is to just dump the waste overboard.

Since the outbreak, Sunseri’s group has handed out brochures about waste disposal to people in the oyster industry. The state has also set aside money to build more sewage stations.

Oysters are excellent filters. Water flows through an oyster, but contaminants can be trapped. The CDC says a small amount of feces can taint a large amount of the shellfish.

Most of the people who fell ill ate the oysters raw. Health authorities caution that cooking oysters is not a foolproof way of avoiding illness, because the harmful viruses or bacteria aren’t necessarily killed by ordinary cooking methods.

In 1993, 203 people got sick from oysters linked to an ill fisherman who dumped his feces into the water. A malfunctioning sewage system on an oil rig was to blame for an earlier 1996 outbreak that made 74 people ill, the CDC said.