Bacteria sick shower head!

[harry k]

[harry k]

My point (add it to the one on your head) is that you CANNOT, no matter how you try heat water to 212 degrees in an open pan except at sealevel...even then perhaps not depending on the barometer reading.

I would explain why to you but it would not sink in.

Harry K

[harry k]

SA seems to be theliving example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

Harry K

[salty]

You are wrong.

Water temps can be made to rise further after boiling starts.

[Hustlin' Hank]

[Hustlin' Hank]

water boils at a

So, if water boils at 212 degrees (what I learned in elementary school and relatively speaking), what temp is the steam that is produced?

211? 213? .....LOL

Hank

[E Z Peaces]

The FDA outlawed wood because it couldn't be run through a washer. Scientists who may have been partial to wood found that if they made cuts on a wooden board and cleaned it with a sponge and dishwashing liquid, they couldn't find bacteria on the surface. Bacteria below the surface were found days later, though.

If they cut on dry boards, swelling would have trapped the bacteria that didn't wash off. With the old, wet boards I've used, the results might not have been so good.

Some cut on counters or plates, not boards. Statistically, people with wooden boards have half the risk of food poisoning, and those with plastic or glass have twice the risk. Glass? Glass doesn't have slices to trap bacteria, does it?

Statistically, washing a cutting board between uses does not affect a person's risk of food poisoning. Whatever board you use, washing should get rid of most of the bacteria. If it doesn't reduce the risk of food poisoning, it sounds as if cutting boards are not a significant danger.

The risk is 23 times higher for people who undercook chicken. I think that's why glass is statistically more dangerous than wood. A person who undercooks chicken sounds careless. Isn't a careless person likely to choose whatever board looks easiest to care for? That would be plastic or glass.

I like to heat a wet dish rag or sponge in a closed container in the microwave. The closed container helps steam distribute the heat. It wouldn't reach autoclave temperatures until the steam was gone, and then it might scorch.

I prefer to bring cloths and sponges to a boil with a little sodium percarbonate. The bleach improves the sanitizing, and the washing soda helps remove greasy soil which could soon harbor bacteria colonies.

[gwandsh]

We do a semi-annual removal of showheads and faucet screens to soak them a bit in CLR, just to get rid of mineral deposits. I think a second quick soak in some bleach/water mixture is a quick way to allay fears.

Stuff happens. Look at the edges of even a clean mountain stream (if you can find one). Things grow in water.

[usenet-659f31de7f953aeb]

Do explain.

[harry k]

won't

212, you got it first time. And water will boil at OR BELOW 212 depending on atmospheric pressure. Of course that is in an open container.

Harry K

[harry k]

te:

Yes, I am waiting for it. I wonder if that is possible usign some esoteric laboratory equipment/heat source. I picture some massive amount of heat applied such that even boiling can't carry off the excess heat.

Harry K

[Roger Shoaf]

Here is a copy of the article from the UC Davis PhD:

[Tony]

And letting the wooden cutting board dry completely kills even more bacteria. It is proven that plastic cutting boards are more likely to hold living bacteria than wooden ones. One of the reasons is becasue both boards will get tiny slits cut into it. The wooden one will dry out and the bacteria will die. The plactic one can hold tiny amounts of water in those slits keeping bacteria alive for weeks or more.

[E Z Peaces]

Thank you. So the USDA recommended plastic but didn't outlaw wood.

I'd like to find out the difference between this research, which picked up bacteria on plastic but not wood, and the research with different results.

At the end, the article mentions the statistical research I mentioned. Those statistics indicate that people who regularly clean their cutting boards after cutting meat are more likely to contract sporadic salmonellosis. That and the statistical finding that people with glass cutting boards are more likely to contract the sickness lead me to believe the relationship with cutting boards is not cause and effect. Perhaps people who don't methodically clean their cutting boards are more likely to cook only what they can eat in one sitting, and that makes food poisoning less likely.

[E Z Peaces]

If steam is water vapor, it is produced whenever water is at a temperature where its partial pressure is higher than the partial pressure of the water in the air. That's when wet items become drier.

If steam is fog, it is produced when the temperature of water is above the dew point of the air. Steam can rise from an icy road as visibly as from boiling water.

[harry k]

All true but his question is 'what temp is the steam from 'boiling water?'

I suspect he thinks water boils at 212 at any altitude.

Harry K

[Roger Shoaf]

"...It revealed that those using wooden cutting boards in their home kitchens were less than half as likely as average to contract salmonellosis (odds ratio 0.42, 95% confidence interval 0.22-0.81), those using synthetic (plastic or glass) cutting boards were about twice as likely as average to contract salmonellosis (O.R. 1.99, C.I. 1.03-3.85); and the effect of cleaning the board regularly after preparing meat on it was not statistically significant (O.R. 1.20, C.I. 0.54-2.68).

I think you are reading this wrong. I read that the folks using wood boards are half as likely to have contacted the disease

That and the statistical finding that people with glass

Here I think you are attempting to get the data to support your assumptions.

If I understand the statistical study, they looked at folks that had contacted food poisoning and then went looking for a cause. I read that they suspect plastic and glass boards are the culprits more often than the wood boards.

The study by UC Davis concludes that wood boards are safe to use:

"We believe, on the basis of our published and to-be-published research, that food can be prepared safely on wooden cutting surfaces and that plastic cutting surfaces present some disadvantages that had been overlooked until we found them. "

And that plastic boards may be making folks sick:

"...we regard it as the best epidemiological evidence available to date that wooden cutting boards are not a hazard to human health, but plastic cutting boards may be."

[norminn]

clipped

Not a scientific study by the sound of it. Not controlled lab conditions. I suspect that if there is less contamination of food from wood cutting boards it is because those who use wood are very likely to be more skilled and knowledgeable cooks. Primary is rinsing meat and poultry from the package before continuing with preparation because contamination, esp. e coli, comes from gut fluids of animal during butchering. The article mentioned people who don't cook chicken thoroughly, which adds strength to the argument. Yuck! Rare chicken!

[harry k]

Not to worry, NOTHING will allay the fears of the truly paranoid. I have sister. I gave her a bucket of spuds from my garden. The bucket was the usual recycled white bucket with 'Danger - Caustic" flag. That bucket had very obviously been throught the garden wars. "What was in this bucket!!??". "Soap". I know her and she most certainly dumped the spuds as soon as she was home.

Harry K

[E Z Peaces]

"The effect of cleaning the board regularly after preparing meat on it was not statistically significant." The likelihood of getting sick depends on how many salmonella you eat at once. If you cut contaminated chicken on a plastic board, the bacteria on the board before washing must be 10,000 times more than those in the slits after washing. So if boards are a health hazard, the odds ratio ought to be 1000 or so.

The data saying glass and plastic are equally dangerous came from another report of the same study. If ever there was a cutting board that would wash clean, wouldn't it be glass? If people with glass boards are twice as likely to get sick and it doesn't matter if they clean their glass boards, they must be getting salmonellosis some other way.

Here's an abstract:

The study included 120 patients and 265 control subjects. It noted that because the patients were self-selected, there may be alternative explanations of the statistics. I see another problem. Experts estimate that 35 cases are unreported for every one reported. So the study is about the 3% of cases who went to a doctor; of those, it's about the ones who chose to participate.

Cutting boards aren't even mentioned in the abstract. The study found an odds ratio of 24 for those who had eaten undercooked chicken, 10 for those who had recently been abroad, 6 for diabetics, 4 for those on hormone replacement therapy, and 2 for those who had recently received antibiotics.

I assume the epidemiological study they mean is the Kass study, which my link abstracts. If the study did not find that those who cleaned their boards were less likely to get sick, I don't see much significance in the finding that a certain group of patients were somewhat more likely than the control group to use boards of glass or plastic.

Undercooked chicken, foreign travel, and diabetes would probably include almost all the 120 patients.

I imagine a dinner where a housewife wants to impress guests would be risky. She may be trying a new recipe. She's trying to have a lot of tasks come out on schedule. She may not test the chicken to be sure it's cooked through, and it may then sit at an ideal temperature for salmonella to multiply.

Several guests may see their doctor afterward, and they may want to participate in the study because they want to know what made them sick. To cook for the group, the hostess was likely to use a plastic or glass board because it's large and easy to clean. The hostess says she washed the board after each use. Statistically, this sort of thing could make it appear that glass is more dangerous than wood and washed boards are no safer than unwashed boards.