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Your Kitchen Sponge Is Gross and Microwaving It Doesn't Make a Difference
- rrauenza 9y agoRelevant quote from the cited article: Sanitation by boiling or microwave treatment has been shown to significantly reduce the bacterial load of kitchen sponges19, 21 and can therefore be regarded as a reasonable hygiene measure. However, our data showed that regularly sanitized sponges (as indicated by their users) did not contain less bacteria than uncleaned ones. Moreover, “special cleaning” even increased the relative abundance of both the Moraxella– and Chryseobacterium–affiliated OTUs (Fig. 3B). Presumably, resistant bacteria survive the sanitation process and rapidly re–colonize the released niches until reaching a similar abundance as before the treatment (Fig. 6A). This effect resembles the effect of an antibiotic therapy on the gut microbiota40, 41, and might promote the establishment of higher shares of RG2-related species in the kitchen sponges. Although further analyses, including controlled sanitation experiments, are needed to substantiate these findings, our data allow careful speculation that a prolonged application of sanitation measures of kitchen sponges is not advisable.
- sbierwagen 9y agoGreat quote: Recently it has been shown that in particular Moraxellaceae get significantly enriched on cotton laundry during a domestic washing process. I guess laundry detergents aren't so great at lysing bacteria! This paper didn't specifically mention how sponges were microwave sterilized, but one of the linked references specified 1 minute on "high". (~1500W, 100% duty cycle, you'd guess) Presumably that wouldn't get any higher than 100C. Would pressure cooker autoclaving work better? There are, of course, bacteria that can survive autoclaves, but I don't know of any that are also pathogenic or coliform.