In her new book, Deirdre Imus says,
She also says you can kill e. coli and salmonella on cutting boards by soaking in vinegar.
I don’t buy it. Can vinegar really kill microbes so effectively? Maybe dousing your counter in pure tea tree oil would disinfect it, but will a cleaner containing the oil do much?
I think I’ll stick with my bleach solution, but I’m curious.
Why not? On what grounds do you doubt it? Remember pickling food in vinegar was originally done to preserve it (ie to stop bacterial activity) over winter.
My initial grounds for doubting these claims are the pseudoscientific, “natural is good, chemical is bad,” and downright dishonest aspects of this book. (Here’s my Pit thread on it.) Then there’s the fact that I can’t find any sources advocating vinegar as a disinfectant that don’t also advocate stuff like therapeutic touch and similar creduloid fodder. From my reading of credible sources, such as Cook’s Illustrated and the USDA, I get no indication that vinegar or essential oils work well for disinfection. From Paula Begoun’s work about use of essential oils in cosmetics, my understanding is that low concentrations of essential oils are useless, and that processing and packaging are likely to degrade the oils anyway, as they are quite volatile.
All that adds up to a gut feeling that I’m not getting the straight dope here, but I’ve had difficulty finding an objective (i.e., not from the “ban dihydrogen monoxide!” crowd) analysis.
I don’t dispute that vinegar has a certain antimicrobial action. Obviously, leaving vegetables submerged in a strong vinegar/salt solution is effective to retard bacterial growth. But that’s an entirely different situation from asserting that it’s safe to use vinegar as a disinfectant cleaner for cutting boards and counters contaminated with e. coli and salmonella.
I’m certainly willing to have my suspicions overturned here. I just haven’t been able to find any reliable source that treats the subject.
Well, I don’t know about disinfecting, but vinegar in stronger concentrations than kitchen vinegar makes a serious weed killer. I mean deadly, and it doesn’t stick around in your soil.
I was instructed by the supplier to use a vinegar-water soak for weekly disinfection of my CPAP gear.
That’s a half-hour soak, which is a bit different than just wiping the counters down with it. However, using full-strength rather than diluted would also matter.
Vinegar is an acid, so I’d imagine it will certainly kill a lot of nasty germ-things, if used in sufficient concentration for enough time. Kill damn near everything pretty much immediately when used in low dilution, like bleach? Doubt it.
But if you’re dousing your counters with straight vinegar and leaving it to soak, it’s probably fairly effective.
It’s all a balancing act - if you’re so germ-paranoid that you can only be happy with bleach, then bleach away. I go through periods like that. If you’re more worried about environmental toxins, then use vinegar instead. I get that way sometimes too.
Not to defend Ms. Imus - my mom’s a sucker for that crap too and it drives me nuts. But just because Imus is an idiot (any relation to the radio guy or just timely coincidence?) doesn’t mean she can’t be parroting someone who said something true. Almost all the whacks occasionally get something (close to) right.
Does it work as a herbicide, so that it would also kill grass? I’m interested in this and wonder if it would be a good lawn weed killer.
She’s married to him, and they have an eight year old son.
My bottle of regular old distilled vinegar at home suggests using it (undiluted) to wipe down cutting boards to both disinfect and remove odor. I’ve been doing so for years.
:eek:
Aha! My google-fu is strong today, grasshopper!
According to this site , it’s not much help for HIV, and E coli is acid-resistant (can’t imagine that a gut bug would be acid resistant, now that I think about it, eh?).
However, it seems to be pretty effective for stuff like salmonella.
It will kill everything. Household vinegar is diluted to 5%, which will kill baby weeds (I’ve done this in areas that have been turned over and are sprouting a bunch of little weedlings). You’re supposed to be able to get higher concentrations (10-30% is what I’ve heard suggested) at farm supply stores and such. You need to use gloves and eye protection and take precaution to use this stuff - it’s very serious and not at all like the stuff you dye eggs with in the kitchen! However, it doesn’t remain in the soil.
If you’re interested in a USDA study of vinegar as a herbicide, here’s a little page on it. It says basically what I had remembered - household vinegar can zap the little guys, higher strengths do a good job on big weeds.