With stories of bacterial outbreaks and food recalls common in the news, a pair of food scientists in West Virginia Universitys Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences is working to change that.

Jacek Jaczynski, an assistant professor of food science, and Kristen Matak, an assistant professor of human nutrition and foods, are helping develop an innovation to the microwave that could bring electron beam, or e-beam, technology into the home kitchen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 76 million Americans get sick, more than 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 people die from food-borne illnesses each year.

And the U.S. General Accounting Office and Department of Agriculture have estimated that seven major food-borne pathogens, including E. coli and Salmonella, have resulted in productivity losses and medical expenses in the billions.

Jaczynski has studied the effectiveness of e-beam technology at the producer level and found it effective against food-borne pathogens like E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The trick has been making the cumbersome technology portable enough to reach the consumer level.

The final safety check should be at home right before you eat the spinach or lettuce or fruit,Jaczynski said.

E-beam kills microbes without heating the food, which makes it better suited for fruits and vegetables that are intended to be served fresh, he said.

The WVU professors are collaborating with Eiki Hotta of the Tokyo Institute of Technologys Department of Energy Sciences to make that happen. Hotta has built a prototype e-beam unit that is compact enough for a possibility of integrating it with a household microwave oven. This novel microwave/e-beam device would have a critical extra featurethe ability to saturate food product with electron beams without heating it and consequently compromising its texture and quality.

Jaczynski and Matak are handling the food science end of the equation, confirming the effectiveness of the electron beam against food-borne pathogenic microbes.

Washing produce isnt as effective because these bugs hold on tightly,Matak said.

And while contamination does occur at the producer level, it happens much more frequently in the home kitchen, she said.