All Hands on Deck: Handwashing Programs

Handwashing For Life advocates breaking the facility down into three areas—kitchen, service area, and restrooms—and attacking each one by determining the 12 surfaces in each area most likely to transfer pathogens to the public or staff, either directly or through the food.

Templates designed to help implement this “dirty dozen” approach are available at www.handwashingforlife.com.

Conditions for Success

The foundation for effective and efficient surface cleanliness is design and equipment specifications. Good choices at the drawing board can be paired with winning supplies that make it easier for the staff to do the right thing at the right time in the right way.

Easy-to-clean surfaces are an obvious choice, as are touch-free faucets and dispensers. High-touch surfaces are best considered as a group requiring frequent cleaning. These are surfaces managed by the operating staff, not by another shift or by a contractor conducting periodic cleaning.

Frequent cleaning of high-touch surfaces allows the use of chemicals that are safer for the worker and the surfaces cleaned. A light-duty sanitizer can be sprayed and wiped with a sanitary single-use paper towel. Disposable wipes are an alternative. Pathogen removal is often easier and faster than killing the organisms. Frequent cleaning by confident staff also minimizes the formation of tenacious biofilms between scheduled cleanings.

In the SaniTwice process, the target surface is sprayed with a light-duty sanitizer, allowed to sit for 15 seconds, and followed by a friction-aided paper towel wipe. This step removes the soil and germs. The protocol is completed with a second spray application, then allowed to air dry.

The Myth of the Reusable Sanitizer Rag

Away-from-home diners deserve clean tables. Bacteria and viruses such as norovirus survive and thrive on these surfaces for hours. Those that are left behind by one ill customer welcome the next.

Cleaning tables with a reusable rag stored in sanitizer is a long-established procedure that is far from a best practice. The Model Food Code only specifies the sanitizer storage method if a reusable rag is to be used; it does not actually suggest storing rags in a sanitizer-filled pail.

An out-of-spec sanitizer level at the source is the first breakdown of this intervention. Sometimes sanitizer is too strong, causing skin irritation for users; most often it’s too weak, and germs are merely pushed around the table, then moved to the next surface.

The best-practice solution is to pitch the pails, remove the rags, and replace them with a spray bottle of cleaner-sanitizer and single-use paper towels or a disposable wipe—both renewable and more controllable resources.

SaniTwice for Surfaces

Another tactic that cleans surfaces effectively with glove-free, skin-friendly cleaners is a process called SaniTwice, originally used as a hand hygiene intervention.

The target surface is sprayed with a light-duty sanitizer, allowed to sit for 15 seconds, and followed by a friction-aided paper towel wipe. This step removes the soil and germs. The protocol is completed with a second spray application, then allowed to air dry, providing the maximum of label-claimed effectiveness. SaniTwice is only recommended for surfaces where final dry times do not interfere with customer comfort.

Train to Standards

Workers must be held accountable for the real-time cleaning of the high-touch “dirty dozen” surfaces in their assigned zone. They own their zones. Visible soils and invisible pathogens are dealt with regularly. Failure to comply with the proper processes must have consequences that include job loss for repeat offenders.

Cleaning procedures are best taught with the support of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) technology, providing the worker with a visible numeric definition of clean within 25 seconds. Standards are set in relative light units (RLUs) as the energy from organic matter is converted to light.