How Your Cleaner Can Impact Food Safety

Everyone has at least some experience with cleaners and degreasers. If you own a food service establishment or spend a lot of time in your kitchen, you have probably tried a long list of cleaners to help remove grease and food stains from floors, counters, and sinks.

You might assume that a product designed to keep things clean is, well, clean. However, beyond the brightly-colored labels and positive brand names of these products often lurks a dark truth: that these cleaners are themselves filthy with harmful chemicals. If you look closely, you can often find warnings about eye and skin irritation printed in small type on the back of the bottle. On the ingredients list, you will find many unpronounceable chemical compounds that serve as emulsifiers, chelating agents, inhibitors, among other things, to help make sure that the product removes dirt and grease.

What you might not know, is that many of these chemicals are made from petroleum, harmful acids, or cooked up in a lab, and can be incredibly dangerous to humans. In fact, it is estimated that one of the key indicators of life expectancy is exposure to pollutants and chemicals. The World Health Organization estimates that over 12.6 million people die per year from unsafe work environments, including chemical exposure.

When working with food, the risk becomes even more dire. Your cleaner and degreaser may be impacting food quality more than you think. Here are three ways cleaning chemicals can enter into your food, as well as how to mitigate them.

1. Direct Contamination
   The most obvious manner in which chemicals from a cleaner or degreaser could make their way into one’s food is through direct contact. There is a potential for food being stored or prepared in those spaces to come into contact with harmful cleaning agents if the cleaner is used on shelves, countertops, or sinks. Chemicals do not have the proper time to evaporate pose a threat. This poses problems in high-traffic settings that require frequent cleaning. Some cleaners that pose significant hazards should simply not be used in these environments.
2. Risk to the User
   Eating food with not properly cleaned hands is one of the most common ways that humans ingest chemicals. Thus, every time the individual in charge of cleaning uses a cleaner or degreaser, they are exposing themselves to chemicals that could potentially make their way into their food. The only way to reduce the risk of this type of contamination is to encourage the use of gloves. Also make sure each employee washes their hands with soap regularly. Especially in a food prep environment, hand-washing should be commonplace as it is.
3. Cross Contamination When Stored
   A deceptive way that chemicals can endanger your food is when you aren’t even using them. If you store cleaners in a pantry or closet along with other items such as nonperishable food, seasonings, or glassware, droplets of the cleaner could theoretically settle on these other items and contaminate them. Avoid this problem by simply storing chemical cleaners by themselves in a place where nothing used for food preparation is present. Be diligent!

The Solution – Use Safe Cleaning Products

To ensure the safety of you and your food, invest in green cleaning products. Thankfully, EcoChemPro creates nontoxic and biodegradable cleaners and degreasers for your home or workplace. Our solutions reduce the risk of health complications and food contamination.

At EcoChemPro, we take safety seriously. Our formula is free of butyl compounds, VOCS, harsh caustics and acids, and emulsifiers. In addition to providing a deep, nontoxic clean, EcoChemPro products won’t damage surfaces, tools, parts or equipment. The developers at EcoChemPro created a top-tier solution that keeps people, animals, and the environment safe. Our cleaning product is effective over thousands of industrial, commercial, and residential applications. EcoChemPro is the truly green all-purpose cleaner degreaser you can count on. To start cleaning safely, get in touch with a service provider today.