Foodborne Illness Acquired in the United States — Unspecified Agents
Cited in 2 Likelier entries (2 risks, 0 decisions).
Used in 2 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
Unspecified agents add ~38.4 million illnesses, ~71,878 hospitalizations, and ~1,686 deaths per year; combined total ~47.8 million illnesses, ~127,839 hospitalizations, ~3,037 deaths
“"We estimated that acute gastroenteritis caused 179 million episodes annually. After adjusting for non-foodborne transmission [...] and for acute, nongastroenteritis illness, an estimated 38.4 million (90% CrI 19.8–61.2 million) episodes of domestically acquired foodborne illness from unspecified agents occurred annually, resulting in 71,878 hospitalizations (90% CrI 9,924–157,340) and 1,686 deaths (90% CrI 369–3,338). Overall, we estimated that each year 47.8 million episodes of domestically acquired foodborne illness occur, resulting in 127,839 hospitalizations and 3,037 deaths."”
Calculation notes
The combined ~3,037 deaths/year is the basis for the normalized figure. 3,037 / 3.3e8 ≈ 9.2 per million per year. Over 59 adult-remaining years: 1 - (1 - 9.2e-6)^59 ≈ 5.4e-4, or about 1 in 1,850. Rounded to 5.37e-4 (1 in 1,860). The 90% CrI on the unspecified-agents death estimate alone (369–3,338) is nearly an order of magnitude wide, which is why our normalized uncertainty band stretches from roughly 1 in 5,500 to 1 in 1,000 lifetime.
Independence note: The two Scallan 2011 papers are companion pieces from the same author team and methodology — they are not independent estimates of the same quantity, they are complementary partitions of the total burden (known pathogens + unspecified agents).
Source date: 2011-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-04-11
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- Statistic
Unspecified agents add ~71,878 hospitalizations per year; combined known + unspecified total is ~127,839 hospitalizations/year
“"We estimated that unknown agents acquired in the United States caused 38.4 million (90% CrI 19.8–61.2 million) episodes of foodborne illness, 71,878 (90% CrI 9,924– 157,340) hospitalizations."”
Calculation notes
Companion paper to Scallan 2011a. Adds unspecified-agent hospitalizations to reach the combined ~128,000/year figure used as the denominator basis for all restaurant-attribution calculations.
Independence note: Scallan 2011a and 2011b partition the same CDC FoodNet/surveillance data into known-pathogen and unspecified-agent components. They share methodology and first author; treat as a single methodological pipeline, not two independent confirmations of the 128,000 hospitalization figure.
Source date: 2011-01-01 · Accessed: 2026-05-02
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