(OR11-02-23) Exploring Relationships Between Foodborne Disease Outbreaks, Power Outages, and Maximum Ambient Temperature in the United States, 2009–2019

Objectives: Average temperatures in the US are projected to increase by 2.5-8.0°F by 2100.

Higher temperatures will place a greater burden on already aging power grids, resulting in power outages (POs) that could compromise food safety in stores, production and distributions sites, and homes. However, the relationships between foodborne disease outbreaks (FBDOs), POs and temperature are poorly explored.

Methods: To understand the impact of higher temperatures and more frequent POs on FBDO-related outcomes, we extracted and compiled monthly time series of 9407 FBDO records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Outbreak Reporting System , 2054 PO events from the US Energy Information Administration’s Electricity Monthly Power Report, and 6732 mean maximum air temperature (°F) values collected for 50 US states and Washington D.C. as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s US Climate Divisional Database from 2009-2019. We examined the pairwise associations using Spearman rank correlation tests and zero-inflated harmonic regression models for FBDO (counts, cases, duration) and PO characteristics (counts, loss, duration, number of affected customers) adjusted for temperature and seasonality.

Results: On average FBDOs lasted 6.6 days (95%CI: 5.7; 7.6) and resulted in 17.7 cases (16.8; 18.5). Typically, POs lasted 30.4 hours (28.2; 32.9) and affected 102,582 energy customers (87,689; 120,004). Counts of FBDOs were weakly correlated with all PO characteristics and maximum temperature (r=0.05-0.18, p< 0.001). Accounting for the high proportion of months with no reported FBDOs (48.57%), temporal trends and seasonality, we found the monthly number of FBDOs increased by 1.0%, 2.3%, 4.1%, 5.5% and 7.9% with an increase in monthly maximum temperature of 1.0°, 2.5°, 4.5°, 6.0° and 8.5°F, respectively, and by 37.7% (31.2; 44.5) with one additional PO per month.

Conclusions: The detected near-proportional temperature-related increase in FBDOs is likely to be underestimated due to potential underreporting and limited spatiotemporal alignment. Expanding national standards for reporting POs to include more spatial granularity and standardized weather descriptions can guide development and refinement of emergency food safety response and preparedness plans.

Funding Sources: DoD, Tufts Seed Grant, NSF (#1855886)