Dealing with and understanding cross-contamination: Daily life vs COVID
Outside of USC Aiken, I have another job working as a waitress in my hometown.
We have spent a lot of time in general learning about food safety, but now in the time of COVID, we have to be especially careful when prepping and serving food.
This got me thinking, not a lot of people know what cross-contamination is or even how it works, so here’s a quick summary of cross-contamination and how it affects every day people outside of the restaurant industry.
Healthline.com defines cross-contamination as “The transfer of bacteria or other microorganisms from one substance to another”
For example, restaurant workers in 2008 at a “Canadian-based sliced meat company resulted in the death of 22 customers due to listeria-contaminated meat slicers.” Because bacteria and microorganisms can live on surfaces for a long period of time, we have to wash everything in between uses, in order not to cross-contaminate.
But how does that compare to living in a global pandemic?
Let’s say you’re at the grocery store, shopping like usual. You pick up a bottle of cleaner to read the ingredients, decide you don’t want it and put it back on the self.
Then, your cell phone rings, and you pick it up with your hands, which just touched the cleaner and put your phone to your face to answer that phone call.
On the surface it may not seem like a big deal, you Germ-X your hands in the car and move on.
But you know what hasn’t been sanitized? Your phone.
You’ll pick it up again (with now clean hands) but it doesn’t matter, you’ll still be touching the “contaminated” item, sticking it to your face, reading texts.
Later that day, you’ll forget you answered that call in Walmart, and touch your hands to your face, spreading the microorganisms.
All this to say is you never know what has been touched before you and even more you don’t know what is clean or not.
In general, avoid touching your face or personal belongings in public. Cross-contamination is something people often forget about then regret not keeping up with later.
Stay safe, wear a mask and don’t touch anything.
