Ozone, the three-atom form of oxygen that damages lung tissue?

Yes, that stuff.

Ozone's power revolves around decomposition. While most oxygen molecules contains two oxygen atoms, ozone has three. Because oxygen does not like this three-atom state, chemists call it "unstable."

When ozone comes unstuck, it forms one two-atom oxygen molecule and one lone oxygen atom. This atom is highly reactive, and it can burst the cell wall of a bacterium as fast as a vicious three-year-old can throttle a balloon.

And that, says Melinda Ballard, head of "operational solutions" at Cyclopss, makes ozone a better disinfectant than chlorine, a tried-and-true microbe killer that's used throughout the food industry. She says that since ozone kills organisms by punching holes in their cell walls, their victims cannot evolve immunity.

Knowing that ozone is often used to disinfect drinking water, Cyclopss is that it should be safe for treating food as well. Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration put ozone in the "generally recognized as safe" category, allowing it to skip regulatory hurdles that would otherwise keep it out of the food industry.

A high-tech bubble bath
Ballard says treatment with ozone-bearing water kills upwards of 90 percent of pathogens on surfaces. A veteran of 20 years in the food business, she adds that most pathogens in the meat industry are spread to the surface of meat by such bacteria-carrying sources as equipment, meat and hands.

Hamburger is the real problem meat, Ballard says, since it is made by grinding up thousands of scraps, any one of which can infect an entire batch. Indeed, both the Jack-in-the-Box and Hudson contaminations occurred in burger meat.

Unlike irradiation, ozone can treat only surfaces. But since pathogens are mainly on the surfaces, ozone dissolved in water could be used to wash chunks of meat before grinding. Once pathogens have spread through a ton of hamburger, only irradiation -- or thorough cooking -- can kill them.

Ballard says Cyclopss is currently pilot-testing ozone treatment for several food processors, including some large meat packers that are leery of irradiation. She says the FDA approval means that ozone could be on production lines within three months. Unlike irradiation, which requires a separate building and separate handling, she says ozone can be "retrofitted almost immediately into a plant that uses water" in its processing.

Cyclopss also wants to use ozone to treat vegetables, which are now washed in chlorinated water. Chlorine may be cheap, but it forms environmentally hazardous compounds, and producers often must pay to remove it from wastewater.