When heat sanitizing in a three compartment sink the middle acceptable hot water temperature is?

May Cartoon: How to Use a Three-Compartment Sink

If you work in food service, you have probably used or have seen a three-compartment sink before. While the steps to properly using three-compartment sinks are fairly simple, small mistakes could cause a food safety violation.

Read these five steps as a quick training tip to refresh yourself on how to properly use a three-compartment sink.

How to Properly Use a Three-Compartment Sink

1. Scrape or rinse away any leftover food on the dishes.
2. In the first sink, scrub all surfaces of the dishes in warm, soapy water. Sanitizing won’t kill pathogens if grime is in the way.
3. In the second sink, rinse the dishes you have cleaned in clear water. Like grime, soap residue can prevent sanitizer from killing germs. Good rinsing makes sanitizing more effective.
4. In the third sink, soak rinsed dishes in a chemical sanitizing solution or hot water. Make sure the dishes are completely submerged. If you use a chemical sanitizer, read the directions on the container to know how long the dishes must stay in the solution. If you sanitize with hot water, the water must be 171°F or hotter. Keep the dishes in the water for at least 30 seconds. 
5. Air-dry the dishes. This is very important. Never towel-dry cleaned and sanitized dishes, even with a paper towel, or you might contaminate them again.

Remember these five steps. If you use them all in the right order, your dishes will stay safe for preparing and serving food.

– Katie Heil

References

Writer Bio

John began his 25-year career in the editorial business as a newspaper journalist in his native Connecticut before moving to Boston in 2012. He started fresh out of college as a weekly newspaper reporter and cut his teeth covering news, politics, police, and even a visit from a waterskiing squirrel. He went on to work in the newsrooms of several busy daily newspapers, and developed a love for detailed storytelling, focusing on the lives and diverse tales that all people have to offer. Moving on to the business arena later in his career, John worked as a managing editor for a healthcare publishing company and a technology software firm. He’s used his background in broadcast journalism as a webinar moderator, voice-over specialist, and podcast narrator. John also holds a master’s degree as an elementary school teacher and spent 10 years working with and tutoring students of various ages and backgrounds, including multilingual students and students with special needs of all ages.

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Employers are required by federal law to provide their employees with a workplace free from known hazards. The law is enforced by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which also makes safety regulations that apply to all employers. Although OSHA does not set restaurant-specific safety regulations, many OSHA regulations cover the type of work environment and activities found in restaurants.

OSHA regulations require machine guarding that protects the machine's operator and other nearby employees. For restaurants, this regulation would apply to the food preparation areas where commercial machines are used for slicing, chopping, mixing or grinding food. Machine guarding can include the use of barriers to prevent an employee from coming into contact with moving parts, such as rotating blades. The employer should also ensure that employees are adequately trained to use machines required for their job duties.

Restaurant owners must provide appropriate protective equipment for employees. For example, kitchen workers involved in food preparation might be exposed to cutting and laceration hazards using knives and handling sharp blades. In certain circumstances, it might be necessary for the employer to provide steel mesh or Kevlar gloves as hand protection to comply with OSHA regulations.

OSHA regulations recognize the potential for certain workplace hazards, such as excessive heat, and requires employers to adequately prepare to address potential hazards. For restaurants, a hot kitchen environment can pose a potential heat hazard by causing health problems such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Although OSHA regulations do not set standards on what constitutes a hot working environment, employers are still required to protect employees from heat-related hazards. OSHA does provide a heat index that indicates what level of protective measures must be taken when a working environment reaches heat ranges between 91 degrees up to 115 degrees or higher.

OSHA regulations apply to all workers regardless of age, but OSHA is particularly concerned with youth worker safety in the restaurant industry because nearly 30 percent of restaurant workers are 20 years old or younger. OSHA emphasizes that safety training is essential for youth restaurant workers because for many youth workers it is their first job. OSHA also emphasizes that youth restaurant workers under the age of 18 are restricted from engaging in certain activities regardless of safety measures taken by the employer. Child labor laws prohibit employees under the age of 18 from working, setting up, adjusting or cleaning any power-driven restaurant equipment, such as slicers or mixers.

The three-compartment sink is a staple of foodservice kitchens. It’s perfect for doing a quick wash up, not to mention most health departments require them in the kitchen. But for operations that rely solely on the three-compartment sink for cleaning all their ware items, kitchen staff spend hours over hot, steamy water, scrubbing at baked-on foods and struggling to keep up with the demand of a busy dining service.

Installing an automated Centerline CUH undercounter commercial dishwasher can improve efficiency, safety and productivity in any kitchen that currently relies on a three-compartment sink. Automated dishmachines ensure consistent chemical dosing and water temperature for proper cleaning and sanitizing, which helps with maintaining food safety protocols and high standards of cleanliness.

Managing Risk

One of the biggest factors at play with the use of three-compartment sinks is human error. When staff make mistakes or fail to follow procedures and guidelines, you not only run the risk of food or grease left on ware, but possible food safety and health code violations as well.

Water temperature. The FDA requires water temperature at minimum of 110 degrees for washing dishes in a three-compartment sink. When first filled up, with the use of a thermometer, most operations can easily meet this. But as time wears on, the temperature drops. In one Hobart study, a sink that registered at 110 degrees at 7 a.m. had dropped to 80 degrees in just five hours. Even with periodic refills to bring the temperature up, by the end of the day the water was at 65-degrees, well below the 110 degree minimum.

The Centerline CUH runs every rinse cycle at 180 degrees, so operators can be sure every piece of ware is properly sanitized. The high heat also helps remove tough food soils that are difficult to clean off at lower temperatures.

Detergent amounts. In order to properly clean dishes, the right amount of detergents need to be added to the water. The Centerline takes away the possibility of human error by automatically adding the correct amount of detergent to each wash cycle. This also eliminates the risk of wasting product, so you’re not throwing money down the drain.

Full submersion. For proper sanitation to occur, items must be fully submersed and soaked in a sanitizing solution for a set amount of time. When a sink isn’t big enough, for many large prepware items submersion is hard to accomplish and easy to circumvent. The Centerline’s 14.46-inch door opening allows for complete sanitization of many pots and pans

Quick drying. Drying is just as important as washing, as dampness allows for the growth of mold and bacteria. Many times people will stack wet dishes, which leads to wet nesting. When using a Centerline, the dishrack allows space for air flow and proper drying, and the high temperatures of the wash and rinse cycle speed up drying times, reducing the wasted waiting on dishes to dry.

Saving Your Resources

In addition to cleanliness factors and food safety issues, the use of a three-compartment sink can have a big impact on the environment.

It takes a lot of water to fill a three-compartment sink. For an operation that fills about five times a day, it’s enough water to fill a swimming pool 21 times in just one year! Every time that sink is filled your operation is wasting water, energy and money! A Centerline undercounter dishwasher uses just .84 gallons of water per cycle, saving literally thousands of gallons of water each year over a three-compartment sink.

The people washing the dishes are a resource too, and their talents aren’t used fully when they spend hours standing over a sink. Three-compartment sink washing is unpleasant and time consuming and can lead to low morale and high employee turnover. With a Centerline undercounter dishwasher, you can run a cycle in just 2 or 4 minutes, so staff spend less time washing dishes and more time on kitchen operations or even in the front of the house serving customers.

Making the Change

With the demands of growing your business and delivering a safe, memorable experience for your customer, switching to a commercial dishwasher can reduce the risks of an embarrassing and damaging food safety event, while creating a better experience for your employees and saving time and money. Click here and Check out our infographic to see more of the benefits of automated washing versus a three-compartment sink; or, visit the Centerline web site to learn more and get in contact with your local sales representative.

Learn more about manual washing risks and food safety in our FREE FOOD SAFETY FACTBOOK.