Office refrigerators easily can incubate disease
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Kathleen Rippel, a senior financial analyst at Straub Clinic & Hospital, said her office refrigerator was at its worst about six months ago.
The fridge — one of those college-dorm-room-sized boxes — housed "things with mold, fruits that had grown fuzzy and shriveled, and a freezer that had completely closed off with ice," Rippel said.
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That motivated a coworker to compile an alphabetical list of people who used the fridge. Every two weeks, someone on the list was assigned to clean out the mess. An e-mail was sent out ahead of time to give the staff fair warning and when it came time to clean, whatever wasn't labeled was dumped.
While the system was successful, it was short-lived.
"It worked, like, for the first four or five times. Then it kind of died," she said.
• Don't leave perishable foods — fish, eggs, poultry, meat, tofu, cooked pasta, vegetables, fruit and dairy products — exposed to room temperature for more than two hours. • Divide large amounts of food into smaller, shallow containers before refrigerating. • Keep the refrigerator temperature at 40 degrees or below to slow bacterial growth. • Write the employee's name and the date on all items put in the refrigerator. • If something is spilled in the refrigerator, clean it up immediately. • Assign or ask for volunteers to clear and clean the fridge once a week. Source: Louisiana State Univ.
Three time zones away, a fuzzy ball that was recently discovered in the back of the Regent Broadcasting office refrigerator in Lafayette, La., became an mystery of ongoing interest to curious employees.
Rules for home or office fridge
"It had changed colors several times before someone poked it and found out it was once a crab cake," says C.J. Clements, a morning show host on one of the company's seven radio stations, housed in the same office.
The office refrigerator is home to a jar of mayonnaise that expired in February. Open milk containers that clabbered weeks ago and a hazy plastic container half-filled with what was once Wish Bone salad dressing also lurk there. So the discovery of a decomposing crab cake didn't surprise Clements or his fellow office workers.
"Someone cleans out the fridge only when they can't stand the funk, which is usually about once every six weeks," Clements says.
Problem is, that funky refrigerator isn't just stinky — it's dangerous.
Office refrigerators have become cold, clammy graves for employee lunches that could spoil and contaminate anything placed inside the dark dungeons, says Annrose Guarino, an Louisiana State University AgCenter nutrition specialist.
Medical centers — such as veterinarian offices and medical labs — are among the worst, Guarino says. That's where employees have been known to store lunches in refrigerators purchased to preserve human or animal stool, urine and tissue samples.
"The office refrigerator is meant to be a place to store employee meals only one day at a time," she says. "It should be emptied of all staff meals at the end of each day."
Refrigerators are designed to slow the growth and spread of bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi and other pathogens that occur naturally in food, Guarino says. However, these food-borne illnesses continue to grow in the cooler climate, she adds.
Bacteria that cause food-borne illness, such as salmonella, E. coli and hepatitis, can't always be seen, smelled or tasted, Guarino says. And it may take anywhere from 30 minutes to six weeks before you get sick from contaminated food.
Rippel said her office refrigerator isn't quite up to snuff, but it is much cleaner now than it was half a year ago. Raising coworkers' awareness of the problem helped.
"I think people are a lot more conscientious now about cleaning up," Rippel said. "It hasn't gotten to that gross stage again."
Guarino offered this rule of thumb to ensure food items kept in office refrigerators are safe:
"If it's not labeled, throw it out. When in doubt, throw it out."
Trevis R. Badeaux of the Lafayette, La., Advertiser and Honolulu Advertiser staff writer Zenaida Serrano Espanol contributed to this report.
