U.S. Foodborne Illness Outbreaks from Chemical Hazards, 2011–2025

127 chemical exposure incidents were identified from 1,270 total foodborne illness incidents evaluated by the FDA's CORE Network between 2011 and 2025. The data, authored by Brett Weed and published on figshare in 2026, details outbreaks attributed to seafood toxins, illicit drugs, toxic elements, and botanical toxins. It includes case studies illustrating distinct contamination root causes and the complexities of investigating chemical foodborne incidents.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in chemical foodborne illness outbreaks based on the 15-year time series from 2011 to 2025
• Compare the prevalence of different chemical hazard classes (e.g., seafood toxins vs. toxic elements) based on the incident attribution data
• Study the challenges of outbreak investigation and regulatory action based on the described complexities like novel contaminant detection
• Evaluate the effectiveness of public health surveillance programs based on the described FDA initiatives and partnerships

Strengths

• Covers 15 years of data (2011–2025) from an authoritative public health source (FDA CORE Network)
• Includes 127 specific chemical exposure incidents derived from a base of 1,270 evaluated incidents
• Provides case studies illustrating distinct root causes of contamination

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• The 24.3 KB file size suggests a very limited scope of data

Provenance

Source

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) Network

Collection Method

Investigation and evaluation of multistate foodborne illness outbreaks

Time Range

2011–2025

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-25 22:02:08

Geography

United States