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Posts
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Just had to lift that line, my apology to the original author.
Okay, I am putting together a list of links to forums discussing countertops so we can start defending solid surface. I’ve posted on many of them, going positive on solid surface where it deserves it, and negative on stone and estone where I feel it deserves it. More voices are needed.
We need as many people as possible on this effort and although one or two posts per day will help, it needs to be a protracted effort. I am going to start a google page that can be shared with links to sites as well as some comments others have said on the subject. If you feel you don’t have the literary talent to help out, you are wrong. Use existing comments as an outline and change to reflect your veiws. Try not to cookie cutter if possible. Read it before posting if need be, or post it here for comments if you are unsure.
I’ll have the google page up in a few hours…..
Copy and paste what ever you add. I left it open to anyone to modify, so someone could delete it at will. I will back it up once or twice a week.
Use you imagination, mine the sites for more links, post anywhere you find a place to defend or spread the negative about our competitiors. Add as many links to sites you can find that discuse countertops and allow posting or offer bad info. Be honest about our own shortcomings, but don’t volunteer info unnecessarily. Don’t expect the oposition to be gentlemen or ladies, fight dirty when needed, but keep the high road where possible. If you write a good response, add it to the comments section for others to use as an outline.
One or two posts a day will help. If you can’t write well, do your best or search for more sites that need replying to.
If you make it sticky, it will not show up in the “All Public Forums” Do you still want me to do it?
Okay, guys. The bacteria testing prodject materials are being gathered. Believe it or not, this has been done by a kid in california for a science fair prodject. Here is the link,
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2005/Projects/J1312.pdf
Another study by the Marble institute is posted at this link, http://www.marble-institute.com/industryresources/2006_snyder_ecoli_cleanability_study.pdf
Notice the procedure used to scrub the counterop, as well as how little time it is allowed to soak in or dry. Twenty scrubbing motions total, with four liters of water on a 9 x 9″ sample! Then again with two more liters of water/vinegar solution.
9×9+81″ or .5625 square feet of counter cleaned by six liters of solution! I am no math wizard, so someone check my math figures, but I came up with10.66666 liters of water per square foot of sample countertop cleaned. Average counter top is supposed to be around 70 square feet x 10.6666 liters per square foot= 746.6666 liters per average kitchen!
Over 197 gallons of water is needed to acheive the test results in the average kitchen.
As they say, figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. I expected the study to be slanted toward the people paying for the study, human nature, but I didn’t expect such a departure from real world conditions. I think the kid had more sense than the professional lab showed, or at least he had more integrity.
I bought a 200 power digital microscope on ebay, ordered some preloaded petri dishes (with nutrient and agar for culturing the swabs off the dirty tops), and am still researching the best dye stains to use. The kid in CA reported that the bacteria colonies were visible to the naked eye, so we ought to get some nice pictures of the little granite loving creatures.
In a couple of weeks, tops, we ought to have some data. Once done and we have an idea that it will be worth having the test done professionally, and a testing lab has been found, a collection needs to be taken up for the costs involved.
Guys, the stone groups are proactive on this matter, as is the stainless steel guys. ISSFA apparently have no intention of doing anything but sitting on their thumbs, so it will be up to us. Reuben has been thinking about this for a while and has offered some ideas on making the test “real world”, which I agree must be the case. Normal cleaning procedure that Suzie homemaker would use, not two hundred gallons of water, perhaps 24 hours between contamination and cleaning, not 15 minutes, and normal cleaning products.
Joe C., you are sharp as a mind as we have here. Would you look over the Marble institute test and look for more weak points? Pretend it was written by Oxley if that helps….
Looks like the actual testing will be reasonable, perhaps $30 to $45 per sample. Say we use twenty samples, around $600 to $900 bucks to do a statisticly valid sample in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get fabricators around the country to sponsor a test or two, send them the swabs and petri dishes and have them swab a countertop in a customers home before sending them to the lab?
We lose a little consistancy in inoculating the samples, but that would be as real world as it gets.
Al,
I’d be good for at least a hundred. I think most of us together could defray the cost easily. I mean the shops with a few men on the shop floor, not you lonely guys.
Tom
Al,
Are you going to do the testing yourself or do you still need some professional to analyze the data?
Al, Since any test can be challanged, what if you were to find a Biology major grad student in a college to oversee the test. At least it might add that extra layer of credibility. People might say just because you stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, doesn’t mean you know how to use the Microscope..LOL….
I wish my daughters college was a little closer to you, they grow all sorts of stuff in their labs…..
Andy, what I’m thinking is to do the test to see what happens, then if it is productive, let the pro’s take over. If the kid in CA is right about visibility of the culutres we ought to get some idea of the difference in quanity of bacteria off the different tops. Seems like if there are ten times more on a particular type of top, there ought to be ten times more after the swab samples are cultured. Need to find out if the 200 power scope is good enough to identify the type of bacteria, but really we are looking for is the retention of bacteria, then whether or not the top can store enough nutrients and provide a crevice for the bugs to multiply. I don’t want to have a fancy table or graph that people like me might not be smart enough to understand, I want to see with my own eyes a larger “smear” or colony of bacteria substancially larger than the control sample.
After a quick try, redo by sending new samples to a professional lab to redo the culturing, classification and counting of the little critters.
Thaw out a chicken, take the juice and culture for 24 to 48 hours in a nutrient, swab the sample tops. Do the same thing with just the chicken itself, rub it around, cut on it, etc, on another set of sample tops. Clean the tops with a paper towel, then a sanitized dish cloth using windex, 409 , bleach water or amonia water mix. Take swab samples at one hour, 12 hours and 24 hours
Any better ideas would be welcome. I have a top that was taken out of a home after 9 1/2 years of use, so it ought to have a few scratches in it (some stone sites and quartz companies claim since solid surface scratches, it has crevicies for bacteria to thrive in). I’ve got some large granite scrap peices as well. No quartz samples available, so if someone has a 2 x 2 peice, it would be nice to have for the test.
KC, if your daughter has some advice, now is the time to take advantage of it. Lets get all the help we can on this. If anyone is interested in mirroring the test, do it and send the samples so I can capture pics of the colonies using the microscope. I’ll post them here or in the photo section, or put them on a google site.
Al,
The test procedure you ar looking at is very similar to what I am thinking about. The growth that the kid for the science project saw is exactly what you will see. These dots etc are the colony of the bacterias growing and from what he described you will find these bacteria every where. The staining procedures you are looking into for thisd type of test to start is not relevant. Gram stain etc are used to differentiaite the type of bacteria to see what we have. In this testing procedure we need to know how many bacteria are in a given area and then see what is left behind. Breaking these little pest down into groups is not important becouse we already know the common ones to worry about are certain one that would be found in food prepared on the countertops, ie. Salmonella spp. from chicken and a few nasty E. coli..Its been a few years for all this to just roll of my tongue, but I am re-educating myself. I just feel that to start with we need to focus on the simple fact are they there (yes), can they be cleaned off (yes) but what product is more readily cleaned and will not sustain continued growth over time. My personal thought is solid surface should out perform all due to the nature of the product hence why most granite test I have seen elect to leave it out of their test. I think in this test we should also include matte, satin and gloss finished to see if the “scratches ” left after the finishing process my effect the growth etc at all.
Also if I recall at the 200X level microscope it will be tough to see much unless you are sure what you are looking for. This is my personal opnion on this part, but I feel worring about gram stain and others is a waste of time becouse that will just tell you wether they are gram negaticve or positive etc to decipher what species we may be looking at. On the growth form the petri plates you can get close any way just by the characteristcs and smell of the colonies and at his point that is not critical. Also if you just swab a surface and you look up the normal flora that is more than likely what you are going to find anyway. I would worry more about figuring out the best way to get a counting procedure down so can get an idea on cleaning procedures which eliminate the most little guys up front and then test at later intrevals 2,4, 6, 8, 12 24 and 48 hour intrevals to see if growth was increased or decreased over that time. I will get you my test procedure by the end of the week and hopefully by then I can get my labratory procedure book found off the shelf or a new one shipped to me.
Sorry if this was boring just thinking out loud with Al.
Reuben
Reuben, I knew about the gram staining and identifiying the little guys. I thought it might make em easier to see. I agree that a big mass will be some proof, enough to have the test redone professionally in a lab.
200x should make some pretty gruesome pics if we can see the colonies with the naked eye. I just want a good way to get a digital picture of the results so we can post it here.
Keep thinking, Reuben, and I would love to have a copy of your test procedures.
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