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Disinfection of household cutting boards with a microwave oven
Park, PK | Cliver, DO*
Journal of Food Protection [J. FOOD PROT.]. Vol. 59, no. 10, pp.
1049-1054. Oct 1996.
Used cutting boards with numerous knife marks, particularly those
made of polymers, are difficult to disinfect manually. Plastic
cutting boards have been preferred to wood because they can be
washed in dishwashers and used in microwave ovens. Our study
tested the microwave oven for disinfection of cutting boards.
Surfaces of plastic and wooden cutting boards were inoculated with
up to 10 super(9) CFU of Escherichia coli or other bacteria in
broth culture and later sampled by contact with agar medium for
CFU assay or by swabbing for ATP bioluminescence assay. On wood,
almost total elimination of vegetative cells occurred with
exposure times of the 3 to 4 min at a high setting on typical 450
to 600 g wooden boards, depending on board size, bacterial load,
and moisture level. On plastic, microwave energy had almost no
lethal effect on bacteria: 12 min of exposure did not reduce the
number of bacteria significantly. Increased moisture (wetness)
enhanced killing efficiency on wood, but was negligible on
plastic. Temperatures near the wood surface reached 95 degree C
within the first 4 min, whereas plastic surfaces reached no more
than 40 degree C. Our study indicates that brief "cooking" of
wooden boards at a "high" setting in a microwave oven is an
effective way to kill bacteria, and thus a very simple and cheap
method to protect food against cross-contaminating pathogens.
Because plastic is relatively inert to microwaves, disinfection of
plastic boards in a microwave oven is impractical.
 Descriptors: Article Subject Terms disinfection | food contamination | microwave oven
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