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From: Sharon

To: DrClark-testimonials@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 6:45 AM

Subject: [DrClark-testimonials] Bacteria's Playground

Article From The New York Times

Bacteria's Playground

 

[In the kitchen, the real danger zone for food-borne illnesses is closer than you may think, but proper cleaning and cooking can decrease the risks.]

 

By Amanda Hesser

New York Times

 

When mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state recently, it made headlines for days and brought action from the federal government. Coupled with a number of E. coli scares, it led some Americans to swear off hamburger.

 

But most people don't seem to worry about what experts say is a petri dish for food-borne illness: the home kitchen.

 

"Everybody is so acutely aware of mad cow disease," said Janet Anderson, a clinical associate professor of nutrition and food sciences at Utah State University, "but people aren't aware of the fact that they don't even wash their hands when they enter their kitchens, which is a much greater risk. "

 

Anderson filmed more than 100 people preparing dinner and found that only two did not cross-contaminate raw meat with fresh vegetables.

 

It is not only people's hands, though. Dish towels, sinks, refrigerator door handIes and warm, moist, crevice-filled sponges are also breeding grounds for bacteria.

 

"A sponge that's been in use for no more than two or three days in a kitchen Will harbor millions of bacteria, " said Elizabeth Scott, co-director of the Simmons Center for Hygiene and Health in the Home at Simmons College in Boston. 'That means that any time you use the sponge to wipe up a surface, you are potentially spreading those pathogens."

 

Pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter are a potential problem mainly for infants, the elderly ill and people with compromised immune systems. But when allowed to multiply on food, they can make the average person sick.

 

"The basic reality is that the risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different," said Dr. Peter M. Sandman, a risk communication consultant in Princeton, NJ.

 

"Risks that you control are much less a source of outrage than risks that are out of your control," Sandman said. "In the case of mad cow, it feels like it's beyond my control. I can't tell if my meat has prions in it or not. I can't see it, I can't smell it. Whereas dirt in my own kitchen is very much in my own control. I can clean my sponges. I can clean the floor."

 

Dread is another factor, Sandman said.

 

People can deal with sick stomachs, but they absolutely dread the idea of rotting brains.

 

Fair enough, except that many of the estimated 76-million cases of food-borne illnesses in the United States each year are contracted in the home, and many can be prevented.

 

Dean Cliver, a professor of food safety at the University of California, Davis, found that microwaving sponges -cellulose ones, not the natural kind - wipes out harmful bacteria.

 

"We did soak sponges in some pretty bad things," he said, "and one minute in the nuke and that pretty much did it "

 

Dishcloths also become saturated with bacteria, although since they dry more quickly than sponges, bacteria are less likely to breed. They can be microwaved, too, or simply laundered regularly.

 

Cliver's other notable discovery involved cutting boards. "Somewhere along the line," he said, "wood got a bad name."

 

Part of the blame, Cliver said, must go to the rubber industry, which assailed wooden cutting boards in order to promote hard rubber and I plastic.

 

In recent years, it has become conventional wisdom that plastic cutting boards are safer and , easier to clean than wooden cutting boards. Even the Food and Drug Administration says that plastic is less likely to harbor bacteria and is easier to clean.

 

In a study, however, Cliver found that cellulose in " wood absorbs bacteria but will not release it. "We've never been able to get the bacteria down in the wood back up on the knife to contaminate food later," he said.

 

Plastic absorbs bacteria in a different way: "When a knife cuts into the plastic surface, little cracks radiate out from the cut, " Cliver said. The bacteria, he said, "seem to get down in those knife cuts and they hang out. They go dormant. Drying will kill, say, 90 percent of them, but the rest could hang around for weeks.

 

"In one test, raw chicken juices were spread on samples of used wooden and plastic cutting boards. Both boards were washed in hot soapy water and dried, then knives were used to simulate cutting vegetables for a salad. No bacteria appeared on the knives that cut on wood, but there were plenty on the knives used on a plastic board.

 

Cliver found that running plastic boards through , the dishwasher only spread the bacteria around. The bacteria in the cracks remained. He said that the water in dishwashers must get hotter than 140 degrees or an sorts of bacteria can survive.

 

Wood cutting boards may be microwaved for five minutes, but Cliver warned that some of the boards , contain metal pieces within. "Some people who dried their boards in the microwave had some spectacular fireworks," he said.

 

Even with clean sponges and cutting boards, no one's kitchen will ever be germ-free because the food supply is not sterile. In 1998, Consumer Reports found that 71 percent of store-bought chicken contained harmful bacteria.

 

Most bacteria in food can be killed if the food is cooked properly. But much of the harm happens before the food gets near the oven.

 

In an experiment, Anderson of Utah State and her colleagues covered a chicken with a product called Glo Germ, which is visible under ultraviolet light The chicken was given to a home cook, who was asked to prepare it By the time the chicken was done, Anderson said, the light revealed chicken juices everywhere on the counter, in the sink, on cabinet handles, even on the sippy cup of the cook's 2-year-old child.

 

Chuck Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona, who has studied bacteria in home kitchens, said he found that people with the cleanest-looldng kitchens were often the dirtiest

 

Because "clean" people wipe up so much, they, often end up spreading bacteria all over the place. The cleanest kitchens, he said, were in the homes of bachelors, who never wiped up and just put their dirty dishes in the sink.

 

The biggest obstacle seems to be simply getting people to wash their hands. Anderson found that only 34 percent of her subjects washed their hands before cooking, and most failed to use soap. Washing hands in hot soapy water for at least 20 seconds rinses off surface bacteria and makes it difficult for bacteria to cling to skin.

 

The less bacteria you pick up, the less likely you will fall ill. Getting people to change their habits, however, is a big mountain to climb.

 

The truth is, as Sandman pointed out, bacteria in the home kitchen is simply not mysterious or weird enough. To respond to it, you have to do something very banal: Wash your hands. And that's just not as compelling as taking a dramatic stand and halting beef consumption in the face of a brain-rotting disease.

 

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Keeping a clean kitchen

[No kitchen is sterile, but certain steps can help cut back on bacteria.]

• Microwave damp sponges and dishcloths on high for at least one minute.
• Regularly launder dish towels.
• Make sure tap water (and thus, the dishwasher) can exceed 140 degrees.
• Prepare raw meats and vegetables on separate work surfaces.
• Wash your hands before cooking, and as often as you can while cooking - especially if you pet the dog.
• Wash the meat thermometer after each use.
• Wash refrigerator door handles, cabinet knobs and work surfaces.
• Fill the sink with hot soapy water and drop in utensils after using them. Change the water often.
• Fully disassemble your blender before putting it in the dishwasher.
• Wash the sink's drain plug and scrub the sink before washing produce in it.

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