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Potato Treatment May Kill Anthrax

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

Potatoes are a common food on tables all across the United States. Potatoes are cooked in many ways to appeal to different tastes. We eat baked, fried and boiled potatoes many different times in the week at my house.

As with any vegetable crop, potatoes are harvested in the fall and must be stored for long periods of time. Time and microbes lead to decay. One company (O₃Co.) has developed a way to kill the microbes on the surface of these potatoes and extend their shelf life. They use a form of oxygen called ozone.

Normally, two molecules of oxygen associate with each other in nature and give us what is called O₂. Under the right conditions O₂ can become O₃, or ozone. Ozone is created in nature by lightning. The electricity breaks apart O₂ molecules and releases one atom of oxygen. Some of these single atoms attach themselves to a standard O₂ molecule. This creates an unstable and temporary form of oxygen -- ozone -- that carries three oxygen atoms instead of the standard two.

This unstable nature of ozone is very useful. The instability causes the extra oxygen atom to want to attach to something. It prefers to attach to carbon. Viruses and bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis (causes anthrax) are made up of carbon. When ozone reacts with carbon it makes carbon dioxide. If the carbon is part of a protein important in making energy for a bacterium adding the oxygen can destroy the protein's abilities, thus killing the bacterium.

Adding oxygen to a molecule is called oxidation, and it is quite deadly to certain bacteria.

The breakdown products that result when ozone decays are normally found in nature. O₂ and CO₂ are found everywhere. That is not to say that ozone is harmless. It is dangerous at high concentrations and must be handled very carefully. Fortunately, ozone rapidly breaks down in the atmosphere and leaves fewer harmful byproducts when it decays than other decontaminating agents (formaldehyde, chlorine dioxide).

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are teaming with a small business located in Aberdeen, Idaho, to experiment with destroying anthrax spores in mail using ozone. This Aberdeen company (O₃Co.) has developed a patented process to deliver high concentrations of ozone -- 300 to 800 parts per million -- to freshly harvested potatoes as they travel along conveyor belts. Ozone destroys harmful bacteria such as Erwinia, which is responsible for soft rot, silver scurf and pink rot. This allows farmers to safely store their potato crops for months.