Brushing up on Hygiene: Are Nail Brushes the Unsung Hero of Clean Hands?
Last month, I focused the discussion within the blogs on handwashing. One aspect of handwashing that I did not cover was the use of nail brushes, and this is a question I am often asked while doing food safety training programs. The nail brush is an often-overlooked tool that can play a crucial role in ensuring hand hygiene. But it must be used correctly to be effective, otherwise it can have the opposite effect.
If you’ve followed our blogs at all or if you have ever worked in a foodservice operation, you know the importance of an effective hand hygiene program. Our hands are the primary tools in food preparation and handling. They encounter various surfaces and substances throughout the day, potentially harboring bacteria and pathogens. In a foodservice environment, nail care is essential to preventing foodborne illness. The areas under the fingernails are particularly prone to trapping dirt and microorganisms.
Nail brushes are simple devices and can be purchased on Amazon for as little as $5.00. They are designed to clean the areas under the fingernails and around the cuticles, where regular handwashing is generally not as effective. These brushes have stiff bristles that can dislodge trapped dirt and bacteria, ensuring a more thorough cleaning process. By incorporating the use of nail brushes into the handwashing routine, foodservice workers can significantly reduce the risk of contamination.
While a nail brush seems like an obvious tool to include in our handwashing arsenal, some states have been removing them from their food code, and the 2022 FDA Model Food Code has no requirement that a handwashing station include a nail brush (outside of the inclusion of a nail brush as one of the two effective control measures if an operation allows barehand contact with ready-to-eat foods). Why would this be? Even the annex three of the food code espouses the benefits of a nail brush, stating “the area under the fingernails, known as the “subungual space”, has by far the largest concentration of microbes on the hand and this is also the most difficult area of the hand to decontaminate. Fingernail brushes…have been found to be effective tools in decontaminating this area of the hand. Proper use of single-use fingernail brushes, or designated individual fingernail brushes for each employee, during the handwashing procedure can achieve up to a 5-log reduction in microorganisms on the hands.”
Nail brushes may seem like a small detail in the grand scheme of your food safety program, but their impact on hygiene and food safety can be substantial – either negatively or positively.
The reason they are not required in the food code and that many states are now removing the requirement is that nail brushes themselves must be kept clean to be effective. Think about the environment at the handwashing station, damp, sometimes wet, and a nailbrush can be dirty – which can cause bacteria to survive, and perhaps grow and thrive. If you read the portion above from annex three of the food code, it does note that a SINGLE-USE or DESIGNATED INDIVIDUAL fingernail brush can achieve a 5-log reduction. This is because of the difficulty operators have with keeping a reusable fingernail brush clean and sanitary. I believe it was EcoLab used to sell nail brushes with a sanitizer dish, but I cannot even find that on their website any longer, so I am assuming contamination became an issue and they stopped carrying them (or no one ordered them, so they discontinued them). They do still carry a nail brush, but without the sanitizing dish.
So, should you have a nail brush in your foodservice? I would encourage you to talk to your inspector first. While I have not heard this directly from inspectors, I have been told by many foodservice operators across the country that their local health department or inspector asked them not to have a nail brush on-site. If you are allowed to have a nail brush, I would encourage you to purchase single-use brushes (which are not cheap, but even Temu has a pack of 100 nail brushes for $0.079 each) or provide one for each employee and ask them to maintain it properly. If you and your inspector determine that a shared nail brush is acceptable for your organization (which I would tend to advise against more and more with the research I have read on these), be sure that you have a method to clean and sanitize it effectively after each use and store it properly.
Nail brushes may seem like a small detail in the grand scheme of your food safety program, but their impact on hygiene and food safety can be substantial – either negatively or positively. Give it some consideration before implementing the use of nail brushes in your operation and make sure it is a positive addition to your plan and not a negative one. Risk Nothing.
Is Implementing a Color-Coded Food Safety Plan Right for your Operation?
Foodborne pathogens are by far the most prevalent cause of foodborne illness in the United States and across the world. There are 31 known agents that cause foodborne illnesses, and more that are unspecified or yet undiscovered – remember, E. Coli 0157:H7 wasn’t identified until the early-1980s. It is estimated each year, 48 million illnesses occur because of these known and unknown pathogens, resulting in over 3,000 deaths.
Maintaining your Equipment: Is it the Missing Ingredient in your Recipe for Food Safety?
Although I am no longer in day-to-day operations, between our students and foodservice lab at the university and my volunteer activities in my local church, I keep a close hand in food production. This past week, I had the opportunity to lead a group of men at our church in preparation of a luncheon for 100 women who were attending a spirituality retreat. Over the course of the morning, I realized our main cooler in the kitchen was not functioning properly and was about 10˚F above the required temperature. While we do have a commercial kitchen, we do not routinely log temperatures, so when the unit started to malfunction is questionable. Even more concerning was not the lunch we were preparing for, but the dinner that was served the night before for 300+ families in the parish.
Contamination of Food: Let’s Get Physical
Earlier this month, we began a discussion about contamination of food. Our first blog focused on chemical contamination, but in this blog, I’d like to look at physical contamination of food.
Contamination of Food: Chemicals, Pesticides, and more, Oh My!
If you have followed our blogs, you have often heard us opine about food safety-related behavior and communication, food traceability, and other overarching food safety topics. We often don’t get into the weeds and discuss topics you may have learned about in your food safety training. But I thought we might circle back around and dig into a few of these topics for a few blogs. This month, I’d like to discuss food contamination, this blog will focus on chemical contamination of food and later this month, we will discuss physical contaminates.
