What is the difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting? Maintaining cleanliness is very important in sectors such as food and beverage, and keeping everything free from harmful chemicals and bacteria is equally essential. Determining which and when to clean, sanitize or disinfect is a requirement. Here are the essential factors to distinguish each of them from the other:
Proper Ways To Determine
1. Which to clean, sanitize or disinfect?
You only clean low-risk surfaces such as floors and windows. They are regarded as low risk as it is not likely to induce pathogen transfer. However, you should sanitize the ones that have surfaces with direct contact with food. This is a must as it is a requirement by the food code. On the other hand, disinfecting is necessary for the areas where frequent touching is present, in which harboring pathogens are very likely.
2. What does cleaning, sanitizing, or disinfecting do?
Cleaning is simply removing debris and dust from any surface. Sanitizing is cleaning up any area or surface and getting rid of visible dirt contaminants that may affect your health. Finally, disinfecting is eliminating the invisible microorganisms that are harmful to someone’s health.
3. Do you need to perform all or any one of them is enough?
Cleaning by itself is actually enough to prevent any contaminants from coming into contact with foods or beverages. Cleaning removes allergens and microorganisms. The concern with cleaning alone is the risk of cross-contamination as the used cleaning tools can contaminate other surfaces when a germicide is not used. Cross-contamination can be prevented through sanitizing as it reduces the number of bacteria present on a surface by almost 100%. This is effective enough, but it does not reduce or remove any of the viruses and fungi that are also harmful. Removing such organisms is by disinfecting as it can remove any organism much higher than sanitizing.
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So, to answer the question – what is the difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting? – Well, they all have the same purpose but have entirely different functions. You need all these methods to maintain a clean and bacteria-free environment which is a requirement for industries such as food and beverage.