Tag Archives: contamination

Washing with contaminated soap increases bacteria on hands

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People who wash their hands with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of disease-causing microbes on their hands and may play a role in transmission of bacteria in public settings according to research published in the May issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"Hand washing with soap and water is a universally accepted practice for reducing the transmission of potentially pathogenic microorganisms. However, liquid soap can become contaminated with bacteria and poses a recognized health risk in health care settings," says Carrie Zapka from GOJO Industries in Akron Ohio, the lead researcher on the study that also included scientists from BioScience Laboratories in Bozeman, Montana and the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Bulk-soap-refillable dispensers, in which new soap is poured into a dispenser, are the predominant soap dispenser type in community settings, such as public restrooms. In contrast to sealed-soap dispensers, which are refilled by inserting a new bag or cartridge of soap, they are prone to bacterial contamination and several outbreaks linked to the use of contaminated soap have already been reported in healthcare settings.

In this study Zapka and her colleagues investigated the health risk associated with the use of bulk-soap-refillable dispensers in a community setting. They found an elementary school where all 14 of the soap dispensers were already contaminated and asked students and staff to wash their hands, measuring bacteria levels before and after handwashing. They found that Gram-negative bacteria on the hands of students and staff increased 26-fold after washing with the contaminated soap.

Zapka notes that all the participants’ hands were decontaminated after testing by washing with uncontaminated soap followed by hand sanitizer. At the conclusion of the study, all the contaminated soap dispensers were replaced with dispensers using sealed-soap refills. After one year of use, not one of them was found to be contaminated.

A copy of the research article can be found online at http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/9/2898.

Watch found in bag of sugar?

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I’m not sure who buys 20 kg of sugar “for coffee and things” but Nubarak Nubarak, 46, of Mississauga, Ontario (that’s in Canada, and 44 pounds of sugar) found a watch in a 20-kg bag of Redpath sugar he bought Jan. 26 in west-end Toronto.

He called Peel Regional Police to find out who he should turn to for help.

On the advice of police, he called Peel’s public health officials who referred him to their counterparts in Toronto, where he purchased the sugar.

Gerry Lawrence of Toronto Public health said Nubarak was referred to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which has contacted him.

Nice run around.

Nancy Gavin, manager of brand development at Redpath Sugar Ltd., said the company adheres to strict quality guidelines (do they ever say anything else?).

"We have metal detectors on the line that would have or should have gone off.”
 

Sentencing next for fish bar operator who sickened 5 with E. coli

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A U.K. court was told yesterday that Wrexham librarian Karen Morrisroe (right, exactly as shown) spent three months in hospital – where she also picked up the hospital superbug, MRSA – and had been psychologically damaged as a result of E. coli O157 after eating a veggie burger and chips from the Llay Fish Bar in 2009.

Anthony Vines, prosecuting, told the court there were five primary cases of E. coli which could be linked to the takeaway, although there were secondary infections.

Council officers found pizza toppings at the takeaway covered in flies, a lack of handwashing materials and clothes in handbasins which were also put over frozen doner kebabs, and inadequate training.

Karen Morrisroe said her illness had resulted in “unbearable stomach pains,” being severely dehydrated, suffering kidney failure and a small seizure. Other victims included an 11-month-old baby, two three-year-old girls and a five-year-old child.?

??Mr Justice Griffith-Williams said he would sentence Ramazan Aslan, former operator of the Llay Fish Bar, next week after reading all background reports. But in granting him bail, he told him that he should not interpret that as meaning there would not be a prison sentence.
 

Plan to reduce pig pollution by potty training

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Environmental authorities in Taiwan say they are planning to promote potty training for pigs to help curb water and waste pollution.

The Environmental Protection Administration made the pledge following the success of a pig farm in southern Taiwan, where the breeder started to potty-train his 10,000 pigs in late 2009, it said.

To keep his animals from defecating in nearby rivers, the breeder has established special "toilets" smeared with faeces and urine to attract the pigs, it said.

This reduced the amount of waste water by up to 80 per cent. As well as making the farm cleaner and less smelly, it also helped reduce illness among the pigs and boosted their fertility by 20 per cent, it added.

Taiwan has about six million pigs, most of them raised on farms in the centre and the south of the island.

Ready-to-eat salads, new pathogens fuel rise in contaminated produce

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Kevin Allen is still a goon – at least on ice.

He’s apparently a nice guy, loving father and snappy dresser when not bashing pucks off my goaltender’s head. He also plays academic sometimes.

University of British Columbia food scientist Kevin Allen told the Vancouver Sun this morning,

"If we look at the past decade, we can see a change in the epidemiology of food-borne disease, more specifically within the category of ready-to-eat foods. Part of the problem is that ready-to-eat foods are supposed to be ready to eat, so unlike poultry and your beef and your eggs, with salads and sprouts there is no cooking and so no pathogen-killing step. … Organisms like E. coli and salmonella that used to be associated solely with poultry and beef are now almost as frequently associated with leafy green vegetables. That is a tremendous shift from 20 years ago."

Christina Hilliard, a fresh fruit and produce specialist with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said,

"Twenty-five years ago we weren’t even thinking about lettuce in terms of food safety, even five years ago we didn’t think that someone could die from eating spinach.”

Allen’s research at UBC is dedicated to minimizing the presence of E. coli in cattle with an eye to stopping the pathogen’s spread through the food chain.

Is grass-fed and organic beef microbiologically safer than conventional? No

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There are any number of agricultural production systems out there, each with their own way of making a buck and each with a certain level of hucksterism involved. I focus on whether the system and the end product are microbiologically safe. The best producers use techniques – regardless of political ideology – that fit best in their production system in their geographic location.

A new study in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease compared bacterial contamination rates and antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from 50 grass-fed and 50 conventionally produced beef products. The researchers from Purdue University and China concluded there was no safety advantage for either group.

The abstract is below:

Contamination rates and antimicrobial resistance in bacteria isolated from “grass-fed” labeled beef products
Foodborne Pathogens and Disease
Jiayi Zhang, Samantha K. Wall, Li Xu, Paul D. Ebner
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2010.0562
Abstract
Grass-fed and organic beef products make up a growing share of the beef market in the United States. While processing, animal handling, and farm management play large roles in determining the safety of final beef products, grass-fed beef products are often marketed as safer alternatives to grain-finished beef products based on the potential effects of all-forage diets on host microbiota. We conducted a series of experiments examining bacterial contamination rates in 50 beef products labeled as “grass-fed” versus 50 conventionally raised retail beef products. Coliform concentrations did not differ between conventional and grass-fed beef (conventional: 2.6 log10 CFU/mL rinsate; grass-fed: 2.7 log10 CFU/mL rinsate). The percentages of Escherichia coli positive samples did not differ between the two groups (44% vs. 44%). Enterococcus spp. were frequently isolated from both grass-fed beef products (44%) and conventional beef products (62%; p=0.07). No Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 isolates were recovered from any of the meat samples. Enterococcus spp. isolates from conventional beef were more frequently resistant to daptomycin and linezolid (p<0.05). Resistance to some antimicrobials (e.g., chloramphenicol, erythromycin, flavomycin, penicillin, and tetracyline) was high in Enterococcus spp. isolated from both conventional and grass-fed beef. There were no differences in the percentages of antimicrobial resistant E. coli isolates between the two groups. Taken together, these data indicate that there are no clear food safety advantages to grass-fed beef products over conventional beef products.
 

Nuevo Folleto Informativo: Empleados de una fiambrería propagan salmonelosis

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Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain

Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:

– Un empleado estuvo en contacto directo con pollitos infectados.

– Preparadores de alimentos pueden transmitir Salmonela de su materia fecal sin saberlo y sin tener síntoma alguno.

– Lavarse las manos después de haber tocado aves, pollitos o reptiles, y luego de haber estado en contacto con materia fecal animal.

Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
Puede seguir las historias de los folletos informativos y barfblog en twitter
@benjaminchapman y @barfblog.