Combined Effect of Temperature and Relative Humidity on the Survival of Salmonella Isolates on Stainless Steel Coupons

Amreen Bashir, Peter A. Lambert, Yvonne Stedman and Anthony C. Hilton
Additional contact information
Amreen Bashir: College of Health & Life Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Peter A. Lambert: College of Health & Life Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Yvonne Stedman: Salvus Food Consulting Ltd, P75 VP83 County Cork, Ireland
Anthony C. Hilton: College of Health & Life Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: The survival on stainless steel of ten Salmonella isolates from food factory, clinical and veterinary sources was investigated. Stainless steel coupons inoculated with Salmonella were dried and stored at a range of temperatures and relative humidity (RH) levels representing factory conditions. Viability was determined from 1 to 22 days. Survival curves obtained for most isolates and storage conditions displayed exponential inactivation described by a log-linear model. Survival was affected by environmental temperatures and RH with decimal reduction times (DRTs) ranging from <1 day to 18 days. At 25 °C/15% RH, all isolates survived at levels of 10 3 to 10 5 cfu for >22 days. Furthermore, temperatures and RH independently influenced survival on stainless steel; increasing temperatures between 10 °C and 37 °C and increasing RH levels from 30–70% both decreased the DRT values. Survival curves displaying a shoulder followed by exponential death were obtained for three isolates at 10 °C/70% RH. Inactivation kinetics for these were described by modified Weibull models, suggesting that cumulative injury occurs before cellular inactivation. This study highlights the need to control temperature and RH to limit microbial persistence in the food manufacturing environment, particularly during the factory shut-down period for cleaning when higher temperature/humidity levels could be introduced.

Keywords: Salmonella; survival; temperature; humidity; food-manufacturing; stainless steel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/2/909/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/2/909/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:2:p:909-:d:724747

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().