5 ms·

The entire article is based on people trying to disinfect sponges using pretty ineffective means (like microwaving???), we dump boiling hot excess water from ou

The entire article is based on people trying to disinfect sponges using pretty ineffective means (like microwaving???), we dump boiling hot excess water from our tea kettle onto our dish washing sponge / scouring pad. I'm skeptical than anything survives that. A better headline for the article would be "most people don't know how to properly disinfect their stuff". I did enjoy the comparison of used sponges with human feces, the article is definitely worth a read.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Given the extremes required for sterilization in terms of either temperature or time, I'd really prefer an actual study to your intuition; pouring boiling water over something only exposes it very briefly, which may not actually be sufficient.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >Given the extremes required for sterilization in terms of either temperature or time It can be as little as 4 minutes for steam at 270*F/~32 psi for medical instruments. That is usually for immediate-needs and 45 min cycles were more typical for what I had to do for a job. Boiling water isn't certainly going to do it. It's probably safer and cheaper to just buy them in bulk and throw them away after a few days of usage than try to sterilize them.
  - mattkrause 9y ago
    132C @ 30 psi is pretty extreme, even for just a few minutes! (Our "flash" protocol is 10 minutes instead of four, but it probably depends on how heavily wrapped the item is).
faitswulff 9y ago
Boiling was specifically mentioned in the study. Previous studies only measured the bacterial load, but not the bacterial composition. Apparently the worst types of bacteria continue to survive and repopulate the sponge in greater numbers: "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." - "Microbiome analysis and confocal microscopy of used kitchen sponges reveal massive colonization by Acinetobacter, Moraxella and Chryseobacterium species" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06055-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06055-9
- duozerk 9y ago
  I wonder how freezing the sponge for 24+ hours would compare.
  - andai 9y ago
    Does freezing kill bacteria? In school we were warned to always let a chicken fully defrost before cooking it, otherwise the center doesn't cook properly and salmonella (which presumably survived being frozen) will survive the cooking.
    - duozerk 9y ago
      Not all of them - which likely means it'd have the same result or worse as the boiling mentioned above. I believe freezing is, however, extremely effective again parasites (but there won't be in the sponge though).

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago

Given the extremes required for sterilization in terms of either temperature or time, I'd really prefer an actual study to your intuition; pouring boiling water over something only exposes it very briefly, which may not actually be sufficient.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>Given the extremes required for sterilization in terms of either temperature or time It can be as little as 4 minutes for steam at 270*F/~32 psi for medical instruments. That is usually for immediate-needs and 45 min cycles were more typical for what I had to do for a job. Boiling water isn't certainly going to do it. It's probably safer and cheaper to just buy them in bulk and throw them away after a few days of usage than try to sterilize them.
- mattkrause 9y ago
  132C @ 30 psi is pretty extreme, even for just a few minutes! (Our "flash" protocol is 10 minutes instead of four, but it probably depends on how heavily wrapped the item is).

faitswulff 9y ago

Boiling was specifically mentioned in the study. Previous studies only measured the bacterial load, but not the bacterial composition. Apparently the worst types of bacteria continue to survive and repopulate the sponge in greater numbers: "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." - "Microbiome analysis and confocal microscopy of used kitchen sponges reveal massive colonization by Acinetobacter, Moraxella and Chryseobacterium species" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06055-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06055-9

duozerk 9y ago
I wonder how freezing the sponge for 24+ hours would compare.
- andai 9y ago
  Does freezing kill bacteria? In school we were warned to always let a chicken fully defrost before cooking it, otherwise the center doesn't cook properly and salmonella (which presumably survived being frozen) will survive the cooking.
  - duozerk 9y ago
    Not all of them - which likely means it'd have the same result or worse as the boiling mentioned above. I believe freezing is, however, extremely effective again parasites (but there won't be in the sponge though).