Posted By martinw Chas you know more about this than I do, but I read years ago in L8 the ACOP for control of Legionella that water should be kept either below 20 C or above 60 C tp reduce legionella bacterial growth. Maybe that is where your advice is coming from. Help anyone?

Posted By martinw Having looked again I saw a few examples of HSE enforcement when water at sinks was 60 C or above due to the water being too hot for hand washing/risk of scalding. So Lee - spot on.

Posted By Chas I am looking to reduce the temp at the sink outlet to 50 deg.C in order to prevent scalding, however I am being led to believe that the washing up sink outlet should reach 60 deg.C to aid with degreasing/washing the cutlery/plates etc. I do not want to reduce the temp if there is guidance or a catering related Regulation to say that it should be 60 deg.C. I suspect I am being led up the garden path but I want to make sure I am in the right. Thanks for the comments so far.

Posted By Larry 60 degrees sounds correct to me. By lowering the temperature I would be concerned over the sterilisation of your pots and pans. Washing up liquid may make the pots look clean but bacteria may still be apparent and cause health risks. Washing up liquid is normally a de-greasing agent only, not a sterilisation fluid. Obviously you have to balance the risk of scalding employees hands with the risk of ensuring compliance with food hygiene. Larry's advice is to either: 1. Contact local environmental health guru for advice or. 2. Get a dishwasher that will heat to 73 degrees to ensure sterilisation. Legionella is a red herring in Larry's opinion and not normally a concern if you have a steady water flow rate which I would suspect you do in a commercial kitchen.

Posted By Bill Elliott Chas It is question of balancing the needs of H&S against the food hygiene requirements. The water will need to be heated to comply with the requirements of L8 but equally there is a duty to ensure that the water system can deliver a product that does not increase the likelihood of food contamination. As 60 degrees is well within the ideal growth range for a whole range of food poisoning bacteria, it has always been the case that water for dishwashing in food premises is at such a temperature and used in conjunction with appropriate detergents that the risk of bacterial growth is minimised. It is worthy of note that 60 (nor 73 for that matter) will achieve sterilisation. The temperature, contact time, detergent (and/or sanitiser)used all go towards reducing bacterial growth but importantly they will depend on the method of providing washing up. Clearly if it manual, temperatures will need to be lower where hand immersion is an issue, if it mechanised the temperatures and contact times can be racked up .

Posted By Bill Elliott Sterilisation is a misnomer in this instance. To sterilise something implies that all known organisms including bacterial spores are killed. This cannot be achieved thermally below 100 degrees C. Temperatures below this achieve thermal disinfection which although will kill a large majority of food poisoning organisms will not destroy bacterial spores. It is here that the time temperature ratio applies, the higher the temperature the shorter the contact time - this is the same principle that is applied to pasteurisation, where for example HTST (high temperature, short term) is applied to the pasteurisation of liquid milk etc. A number of bacterial spores will survive boiling for many hours.

Posted By Chris Packham Marcus Re gloves just keep in mind that for the skin the wearing of gloves is equivalent to having your hands in water. In Germany this is part of a regulation (TRGS401) requiring special precautions if occlusive gloves have to be worn for more than 4 hours in total in an 8 hour shift. Hot water will increase the effect of occlusion on the skin. This makes the skin particularly vulnerable. When the gloves are removed it can take a considerable time (up to 2 hours in some cases) for the skin to recover its normal barrier properties. So after the gloves are removed we may need to take this into consideration when looking at what that person can do immediately afterwards. The hot water will cause sweating inside the gloves and this can and lead to irritant contact dermatitis. Heat also damages the lamellar layer in the stratum corneum, making the skin more vulnerable to damage. This is why hands should only ever be washed in lukewarm water. So for health and safety reasons, i.e. to protect the worker, water temperature should be no higher than is really necessary to provide the cleaning effect required. Chris

Posted By Baldy Hi Chas, To answer your question in short, there is no 'legal' temperature stated for washing up in any food hygeine legislation. You are being led up that path. Regards Paul (EHO).