EcoliFacts

Your mission is to:
 * 1) add what you find about this topic to this page.
 * 2) Please print interesting articles/web pages you find AFTER you put a link to them here. We need this to put in the research book.
 * 3) If you copy some content make sure to say "I found this " (where you replace  with the web address of your source).

Questions you need to be able to answer so you can explain to the judges why you looked at this topic:
 * 1) Why is this issue important for the project?
 * 2) Facts about e-coli:
 * 3) how big is it? If e-coli was as a grain of rice, then an average person would be how tall? or how does it compare to a human hair?
 * 4) Where does it live
 * 5) what type of e-coli baceria are out there? which are good, which are bad? Why do some of them make us sick which other do not?
 * 6) how does it get into the food to fork chain?

=E-Coli bacteria: know thy enemy=

Start by looking here at the links on here: ground meat. __What is E-Coli?__ Escherichia coli (E-Coli) is a bacteria:



E coli normally lives in the intestines of healthy people and animals. Most varieties of E. coli are harmless or cause relatively brief diarrhea. But a few particularly nasty strains, such as E. coli O157:H7, can cause severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting (see ref [1]).

__How big is E-Coli?__

From this source [] we know that E.coli is way too small for our eyes to see. It is 3 microns (micrometers = 0.001 millimeters) long and 0.6 microns in diameter. It is rod-shaped and it has a volume of 0.6 to 0.7 µm3 (cubic micrometer). In comparision a grain of rice is 8mm long. So imagine E. coli was the size of a grain of rice (we'd have to enlarge it 2666 times, because 0.003 x 2666 = 8 mm), then a 6ft man would be almost 16,000 ft tall (that's as tall as some of the highest mountains in the US []). Since a 6ft person is 230 bigger that a grain of rice, it means a person is 600,000 times bigger than the size of E-Coli. __Good and bad E-Coli__ Some E.coli make us sick because they develop virulence factors that produce bacterial toxins (see ref 3). The CDC (Center for Disease Control) recorded the following three E. coli outbreaks in 2011 caused by bad E-Coli: Healthy adults usually recover from infection with E. coli O157:H7 within a week, but young children and older adults can develop a life-threatening form of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome. (see ref [1]).
 * 1) Travel to Germany – Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O104, 2011
 * 2) Lebanon Bologna - E. coli O157:H7, 2011
 * 3) Hazelnuts - Escherichia coli O157:H7, 2011

__Where do you find E-Coli that makes people sick?__ You may be exposed to E-Coli from contaminated water or food — especially raw vegetables and undercooked ground beef.

References 1) [] 2) [] 3) []