Food safety protocols are perhaps some of the most stringent safety regulations among broader business requirements. Making sure what we eat is safe has kept our country healthier than most, from very early on and kept profitable production lines going. Now Foodservice is faced with an intense new combatant in Covid-19, keeping the industry closed in many areas and in need of help everywhere.

As re-opening or loosening guidelines and precautions starts to spread, Restaurants and Bars will begin to test the cleaning and disinfecting solutions put in place. Among those concerns should be,  “What is in those cleaning products” and at the top (and what is concerning) are “quats”.  Quaternary Ammonium Compounds, basically a line list of harmful chemicals that usually end in “onium chloride” that do a great job on Covid-19, and have their own list of other possible affects they leave behind with their residue.

• Potent skin irritants and can cause rashes and dermatitis.
• Cleaning workers exposed regularly to “quats” have developed occupational asthma.
• Reproductive harm, potentially affecting fertility, and possibly leading to birth defects.
• Widespread use of quats is contributing to the global problem of antimicrobial resistance, leading to the development of “superbugs” that cannot be controlled with antibiotics.

These types of disinfectants don’t really feel like they fit the bill for our essential Foodservice Workers or  their customers. Yet this is what is produced from most of your “big brands” and made available to distributors and resellers. “Quats” tend to keep prices low and are complete with warnings and directions that according to a recent CDC survey, regarding household cleaning practices, a THIRD of responders don’t adhere to. Now we know Foodservice teams are FAR more efficient than any of us at home, but the idea that these guidelines are obviously under-communicated is alarming.

Finding the right choice may be a bit more difficult, but it will be well worth it to your family at work and the families who visit. Products utilizing citric acid, lactic acid,  hydrogen peroxide, or thymol are safer options but should still be used properly according to instructions and warning.

They have the proper, EPA N-Listed, Covid-19 killing power but just like “quats” are subject to efficacy times. Surfaces must be left WET for the stated time frame in order to actually disinfect and even sanitize. This tends to be anywhere from 2-10 minutes, depending on how powerful the ingredients are most times.

Let’s make the right choices not only for our food-contact surfaces, but the entire environment, and offer a safer home to our family and restaurant goers alike.

Want more information on disinfecting in Hospitality & Foodservice? Check out our related article “Are you using the right cleaning products in your Hotel or Resort Lobby?”

Source:

Chemical & Engineering News – Do we know enough about the safety of “quat” disinfectants?

Women’s Voice For Earth – Cleaning with Pesticides? Quit the Quats!

CDC – Knowledge and Practices Regarding Safe Household Cleaning and Disinfection for COVID-19 Prevention — United States, May 2020

UMass Lowell – Disinfectants Can Kill the Coronavirus, but Can Also Harm Health

The EPA N List…a list in which the EPA expects all products will kill SARS-CoV-2. Not a list of safe products to use on yourself to kill SARS-CoV-2 so lets just get that out of the way. This is a list of products meant to be used on surfaces and should still be kept out of the reach of children. Note as well there are levels of harmfulness that can be associated with these products and most are considered pesticides.

There is though a “Safer Choice Standard” compiling the better choices in this group, and that is perhaps one of the best tools we have found. However, this isn’t a proactive list and products that are already on List N still have to be submitted and it takes time.

In terms of killing SARS-CoV-2 there is a bit more to it than just wipe or spray and go. These products have very specific times (efficacy time or contact time) they must be left WET on the surface first to sanitize and then a bit longer to disinfect. Keep in mind they may not list SARS-CoV-2 specifically, it may be another related virus that they categorize as being similar or more difficult to kill. In that case you are following those instructions with the expectation of killing the virus, and we suggest wiping the surface down with something less evasive after disinfecting.

If you take a jump over to the EPA site, you can find out a lot more about the product and define some of the important abbreviations you might see. Perhaps one of the most important for Foodservice and Hospitality is understanding Food Contact guidelines, and if a surface needs to be rinsed afterwards. Hopefully, it doesn’t need to be said but, don’t use any of them on food.

• Hard Nonporous (HN): Use on hard nonporous surfaces like doorknobs, faucets, light switches, and sealed wood.
• Porous (P): Use on porous surfaces like fabric, cushions, untreated wood.
• Food Contact Surfaces, Post-Rinse Required (FCR): Use on surfaces that touch food like countertops, dishes, and cooking utensils. Do not use on food. Rinse the surface after using this product.
• Food Contact Surfaces, No Rinse (FCNR): Use on surfaces that touch food like countertops, dishes, and cooking utensils. Do not use on food. You do not need to rinse the surface after using this product.

You should be wearing proper protection on your hands when applying many, if not most, of these products. They usually recommend washing you hands right after using them as well.

A few factors seem to still be at play here, limited manufacturers and limited EPA resources to qualify new facilities and products. Let’s take disinfecting wipes for example. The facility it is made in must be certified by the EPA for the process it intends, then the ingredients must be EPA certified. In the case of wipes this means the clothe roll and the disinfecting fluid it will absorb, and finally the completed product must be EPA tested and approved to get that List N badge.

None of this is any small task for either side and is what, hopefully, keeps large outbreaks of even more harmful products from emerging. We have seen some issues with Hand Sanitizers but those fall under FDA guidelines. You can also get a crash course on snooping out products that could be an issue via the EPA Compliance Advisory.

Then the new cleaning standards come into play, and the level of demand has risen even too quickly for major players like Clorox. It will be hard to match the industries push to reopen with proper growth in capacity, and we are sure there is a fear of overbuilding production processes that will just be shut back down.

The carefully measured scale of U.S. Manufacturing is truly being tested and it will take some time to adjust. How long, is not quite clear, there seemed to be talks of inventory returning to better levels mid-2021, but we haven’t seen any further updates since the end of last year. There are however, some great niche brands out there using safer chemicals and still on the EPA N List, and perhaps more readily available.

Source:

EPA – Safer Choice Standards

EPA – List N Search Tool

EPA – “I have a question about a word or phrase on the List N website. I’m not sure how something on List N helps me fight COVID-19.”

FDA – Hand Sanitizers not to use