Tag Archives: School

Failure to make councils check school toilets ‘risks poisoning’

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Whenever there’s an outbreak of norovirus or some other tummy upset that forces large numbers of students to call in sick, check the bathrooms.

Are the tools for proper handwashing – running water, soap and paper towel – actually available?

And while a report titled, A Response to School Toilets: Best Practice Guidance for Primary and Secondary Schools in Wales, may not make exciting bathroom reading, continual attention to hygiene basics consistently reduces the numbers of people barfing.

Consumer Focus Wales (CFW) made the same point today, arguing that children face an increased risk of contracting and spreading deadly bugs because councils will not be forced to check school toilet hygiene.

As part of the South Wales E.coli public inquiry, Professor Hugh Pennington recommended that every council should have a program of audits to ensure all schools have adequate toilet and handwashing facilities.

Jennie Bibbings, CFW’s senior policy advocate, said: “In the current financial climate school toilets might be a low priority but hygiene standards could suffer and the risk of illness among school children increases.

The public inquiry into the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in South Wales heard shocking evidence about the state of school toilets. In some of the schools in the outbreak area there was no running hot water or even soap for children to wash their hands.

Peter Clarke, Wales’ first Children’s Commissioner, had highlighted concerns about the lack of soap and toilet paper in some schools in 2004 – a year before butcher William Tudor caused the E.coli O157 outbreak.

And his successor Mr Towler again highlighted the sub-standard facilities in his third annual report last year.

“Currently I’m seeing inequality across the country with some schools having made considerable improvement while other pupils feel so strongly about it they refuse to use the toilet during the school day.”

Consumer Focus Wales said it should also include standards for staff facilities because successive food hygiene inspection reports have revealed variable performance among school canteens in the provision of hand washing facilities.”

Rodents have been here: Colorado school cafeteria inspections

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Inspections of some Colorado school cafeterias in the last two years have turned up evidence of everything from rodents to fecal matter — issues that are considered "critical violations," according to local health departments.

Tom Butts of the Tri- County Health Department, told CBS4 school cafeterias, "in general they are some of our better operated facilities. They have lots of people watching them."

But that scrutiny doesn’t guarantee cleanliness.

At Denver’s South High School, a 2009 city inspection of the cafeteria revealed "evidence of rodents … in the facility. Rodent droppings are found in the dry storage along the walls on the floor."

South High School principal Steve Wera told CBS4 the problems have been addressed, adding, "We’ve made the appropriate changes. We can do better, we need to do better at this so I made sure we did."

Wera said since those problems were discovered the school brought in a new lunchroom manager and made other staff changes.

Salmonella in France: 500 sick from beef patties

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A report released Wednesday by the Prefecture of Vienne in France concluded that 500 people, mostly middle school and high school students in Poitiers, were poisoned to varying degrees between October 19 and 22, 2010, after eating hamburgers containing salmonella.

Most are young people from three middle schools and one high school in Poitiers and about 20 people had to be hospitalized.

At Saint-Cyr (Haute-Vienne), twelve cases (seven from Annecy) were identified at a holiday resort, and a dozen were identified in a nursing home for the elderly.

The investigation lead by the Departmental Direction of Population Protection identified the offending food as a batch of frozen beef patties produced by an Italian company.

Thanks to my friend in France, Albert Amgar, for forwarding the latest story from AFP, and my best friend, Amy Hubbell, for the translation.
 

Proper handwashing requires proper tools; no preaching without provisions

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A Toronto school had 250 students absent with flu-like symptoms earlier this week, believed to be norovirus-related. A school in Philipsburgh, PA, was closed today after 100 kids developed what was thought to be norovirus. And the tri-delts at the University of Michigan were barfing a couple of weeks ago because of, norovirus.

These stories all carry advice for students to wash their hands. But have any of these intrepid reporters gone to the school or sorority and checked out whether proper tools – running water, soap, paper towel – were available for proper handwashing? Too frequently, such tools are glaringly absent, especially in schools.
 

Sick in French salmonella outbreak tops 100

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Over 100 school kids (and a few adults) have been confirmed sick by salmonella in ground beef patties in Poitiers, France.

The source of original contamination has not been uncovered.

So far cases are limited to the Department of Vienne. Health authorities sent out a national alert but the school holidays hampered the investigation. It was an ER doctor in Poitiers who sent out the alert after seeing 8 patients arrive in the University Hospital with the same symptoms and from the same school. At that point they started a "regional cell of sanitary surveillance.” (Amy’s not sure on that translation).

Thanks to Albert Amgar for forwarding the story.
 

Salmonella sickens 52 in France

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Albert Amgar passed along this story about a salmonella outbreak largely located in middle schools in Poitiers, France.

Health authorities have confirmed salmonella in 52 people, found in ground beef patties.

The distributor that provided the contaminated burgers was asked to recall and destroy the entire lot without delay. The meat was apparently imported.

The story also says a child from the College Henri-IV underwent an unnecessary appendectomy. The female teen, who had a very high fever and violent abdominal pains, was apparently also a victim of this foodborne outbreak.

(Translated by Amy Hubbell)
 

Grown in greenhouse or garden, produce must be safe to serve

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Ariz.-based Eurofresh Farms has, according to The Packer, developed a new food safety system, EnviroLock, that requires workers, and anyone entering produce-producing greenhouses, to pass through a sanitation facility before entering, wash and disinfect their hands and forearms, and don color-coded hospital-style scrubs, shoes, hairnets and gloves through the duration of their shift of stay.

That’s because anything that comes into contact with fresh produce has the potential to contaminate, is difficult to wash off, and outbreaks of foodborne illness are disastrous.

In Chicago, the Public School gardens are full of chubby tomatoes, heavy squash and fragrant basil but none of the produce ever finds its way into CPS lunchrooms. Instead, because of rules set by the district and its meal provider, the food is sold or given away.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the policies are in place despite the high obesity rate among Illinois children and experts’ concerns that young people are eating few fresh vegetables.

And that’s the problem with these stories, playing safety off against local and little kids.

Why not teach kids about food safety; instead of complaining that local is magically immune to microorganisms, embrace and market the food safety advantages of local markets – but only if it can be backed up with data.

Put the rhetoric aside and combine microbiologically safe with local – that means answering the same questions the big, controlled access greenhouses have to answer to sell their produce to Walmart and Costco and others: know and test the source of irrigation water, pay attention to the quality of soil amendments, let kids know the importance of handwashing and how dangerous bugs move around.

Big or small, be the bug, and be safe.
 

Brit kids avoid school toilets because of dirt and bullies; hard to wash hands

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U.K. children are deterred from using school toilets in secondary schools because they are dirty – and occupied by smokers and bullies, a survey warns.

BBC reports that a quarter of the 300 children surveyed by experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said they avoided toilets if at all possible.

Speaking before Friday’s Global Handwashing Day, the scientists said facilities were "dirty and inadequate."

More than a third (36%) said their toilets were never clean, with 42% saying soap was only available sometimes, and almost a fifth (19%) said there was never any soap.

Nearly 40% of secondary school girls reported ”holding it in” so they didn’t have to go to the toilet.

And 16% of secondary school boys reported "bad things" happening in the toilets, making them wary of going in there.

Around 150 primary school children were also questioned in the survey, but they reported far fewer problems with their toilets.

Dr Val Curtis, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Hygiene Centre, who led the research, said,

"It would be easy to blame laziness on the part of the kids for this state of affairs, but clearly the problem lies with inadequate and dirty facilities, particularly in secondary schools."

Proper handwashing requires access to proper tools.

Most Philadelphia school cafeterias flunk – Health Dept

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More than half of the schools in the Philadelphia School District – 53 percent – failed their most recent health inspection, according to state Department of Agriculture records, while a staggering 66 percent of charter schools were out of compliance.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that of the 40 schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that were inspected last school year, 35 percent were out of compliance.

Some schools on the list were hit with as many as 20 risk-factor violations, ranging from mouse feces found on cooking utensils to food being stored next to chemicals.

Justin Carter, a recent West Philadelphia High School graduate, said he gave up eating school lunches long before he graduated. He said the news doesn’t come as a surprise.

"It’s atrocious," he said, recalling his food woes at his alma mater, which was hit with 10 violations last spring.

"They served chicken twice a week, and it wouldn’t be cooked all the way through – it was soft and pink in the middle. The food worker would put it in a microwave for five minutes like that would make it better. It would be the same way every time."