Cross-contamination between a hospital's vacuum and compressed air systems was demonstrated using xenon-133 as a tracer. A xenon-133 bolus was introduced to the vacuum system in the intensive care unit. Calculations based on the amount of radioactive tracer recovered from the compressed air outlet at the same location as that at which the tracer was introduced indicated that 17% of the tracer h...

Methods Following a standardized physical exam using sterile gloves and a sterile stethoscope, bacterial contamination of the following regions were assessed using contact plates: stethoscope diaphragm, stethoscope tube, fingertips, thenar region, hypothenar region and back of physician’s dominant hand. Total aerobic colony count (ACC) were determined on digital photographs using a counting tool.

INTRODUCTION Food-borne infections and intoxications remain one of the most important public health issues globally, both in developing and in developed countries. Numbers of reported outbreaks of food-borne diseases and diseased people are constantly growing. For instance, a total of 320,000 of cases of food-borne diseases, caused by only 6 most prevalent bacterial pathogens (non-typhoidal Sal...

DNA sample contamination is a serious problem in DNA sequencing studies, and may result in systematic genotype misclassification and false positive associations. While methods exist to detect and filter out cross-species contamination, few methods to detect within-species sample contamination are available. In this paper, we describe methods to identify withinspecies DNA sample contamination ba...

Compared with solid media, broth-based mycobacterial culture systems have increased sensitivity but also have higher false-positive rates due to cross-contamination. Systematic strain typing is rarely undertaken because the techniques are technically demanding and the data are difficult to organize. Variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) analysis by PCR is rapid and reproducible. The digital prof...

Research conducted so far on the presence of microplastics in environment shows that these items are ubiquitous pollutants and therefore constitute an inherent part our lives. This constitutes a significant problem many aspects, one them is correct identification environmental samples. Environmental samples can be easily contaminated by plastic microparticles from other sources if proper precau...

Modeling the propagation of bacterial cross-contamination within bulk material is a critical task for validating microbial safety complex post-harvest processing tree nuts. In this paper, discrete element method (DEM) coupled with heat transfer modeling was applied to cell problem, and model outputs were translated into case almond kernels contaminated Salmonella in mixing process. The DEM cali...

Conditions associated to the consumption of gluten have emerged as a major health care concern and the treatment consists on a lifelong gluten-free diet. Providing safe food for these individuals includes adapting to safety procedures within the food chain and preventing gluten cross-contamination in gluten-free food. However, a gluten cross-contamination prevention protocol or check-list has n...

Currently, most fresh-cut processing facilities in the United States use chlorinated water or other sanitizer solutions for microbial reduction after lettuce is cut. Freshly cut lettuce releases significant amounts of organic matter that negatively impacts the effectiveness of chlorine or other sanitizers for microbial reduction. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether a sanitizer wa...