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kitchen sink

What’s The Dirtiest Thing In Your Kitchen?

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It’s Right Next To Your Sink:  Your Sponge

Whether you cook in your kitchen or just use it to stage your take-out food, almost all of us have a sponge hanging around the kitchen sink.

Whether you use that sponge to wash dishes, pots and pans, or just to wipe up the spills and crumbs on the counter, you might be horrified to find out what’s lurking in your yellow, green, blue, or pink cleaner upper.  Your sponge just might be the dirtiest thing in your kitchen.  Even restaurants, according to the FDA’s Food Code, are prohibited from using a sponge for the final wipe of a surface that comes into contact with food.

 What Can Be Lurking In Your Sponge

CSPI’s Nutrition Action Health Letter (11/11) reports that in a recent NSF International survey of US homes:

  • Coliform bacteria was found in 77% of sponges and dishcloths
  • Yeast and mold was in 86%
  • Staph bacteria was found in 18%

Why Are Sponges So Filthy?

There are a bunch of reasons your trusty cleaner upper is not so trustworthy.

Sponges:

  • are usually wet and/or left in damp areas near your sink – and germs love damp and wet places to multiply
  • constantly touch food residue that then hangs around inside the sponge and provides nutrients for organisms to grow
  • have lots of nooks and crannies that are great places for organisms to set up residence
  • aren’t usually cleaned or sanitized before they are used

What To Do – And What Not To Do

Only washing your sponge in running water and squeezing out the excess doesn’t do a whole lot. Soaking your sponge in 10% bleach (about twice the concentration of household bleach) for three minutes or soaking it in lemon juice or water for one minute turned out to be almost like doing nothing.

If you’re thinking that you’re ready to swear off kitchen sponges forever, there’s hope. Microbiologists at the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Lab found:

  • You can get rid of a significant number of bacteria by microwaving a wet sponge for one minute – make sure your sponge doesn’t have metal in it and that it’s wet (or it might catch fire)
  • Almost as many bacteria are killed by running your sponge through the dishwasher

Of course, if you want to, you could always use good old dishcloths and toss them in the washing machine every day.  Or, you could use paper towels for a lot of wipe up – except that’s not such an environmentally great solution.

So, even if your sponge doesn’t stink or still looks nice and clean, there still might be some nasty stuff living in there.  Just make sure that your sponge and your microwave and/or dishwasher develop a nice friendly relationship.

The Five Second Rule: Don’t Start The Countdown

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The Five Second Rule: if food falls on the floor you can safely eat it if you pick it up within five seconds.  I wrote a popular post on this last year and it’s a topic that resurfaces all of the time — recently in The New York Times.

The Truth About Five Seconds (or three, or seven)

It’s bogus!  In most cases, if bacteria are on the floor, they’ll stick to food almost immediately on contact.

Things that affect how quickly the bacteria cling are the kind of floor; the kind of food; the kind of bacteria; and how long the bacteria have been hanging around on the floor.

 

Let’s Go For Zero

A food scientist and his students at Clemson University tried to determine if the five second rule has some validity or if it’s just a bunch of bunk.

For their study, they put salmonella (as few as ten of these bacteria can cause stomach issues) on wood, tile, or carpet, and then dropped bologna on them for 5, 30, or 60 seconds. More than 99% of the bacteria were transferred nearly immediately from the wood and tile and a smaller number were transferred from the carpet. Over a number of hours, the number of bacteria that transferred decreased, but thousands per square centimeter still remained on the surfaces after 24 hours. Hundreds hung around for as long as four weeks.

 

Location, Location:  The Sidewalk Is Better Than The Kitchen Floor

Most researchers agree the important thing is not how long food takes a vacation on the floor, but where that stay is. Believe it or not, according to a professor of microbiology and pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and author of Germ Proof Your Kids, it may be okay to brush off and give back the gummed up bagel that your kid tossed out of the stroller. Pavement has fewer types of germs that cause illnesses than the kitchen floor — which is probably coated with health hazardous bacteria from uncooked meat and chicken juices.

 

Don’t Retrieve Food From The Kitchen Sink Either

Kitchen sinks have more germs than bathroom sinks and three-quarters of kitchen dish cloths and sponges are heavily contaminated with harmful bacteria like  E. coli and salmonella.  The bacteria, probably carried into the kitchen by food, kids, or pets, can cause diarrhea or infections with flu-like symptoms (especially dangerous for small children, the elderly, and pregnant women).  Bacteria adore the food collected in sponges used to wipe stuff up and can find a happy growing ground nestled in your sponge.