Jim Yanik wrote:
Steve Daniels wrote in
:

On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:50:15 -0400, against all advice, something
compelled " , to
say:

Good advice, but not the most important thing. My concerns with
a wood cutting board are the fine cuts into the wood that can
harbor e-coli or salmonella, esp. when cutting meat.


I solve that by not cutting meat on a wood board.


but the wood draws away moisture from the bacteria and kills them quicker
than the plastic boards. Plastic boards still have fine cuts that harbor
bacteria. I've read that plastic boards retain bacteria longer than wood
boards,after cleaning.

Doesn't the FDA mandate plastic? If you're fixing a meal, how are you
going to let a wooden board dry between cuttings? Drying won't kill
spores, and the wood could absorb fat that harbored bacteria.

I switched to plastic long ago. With either kind, the recommended way
to sanitize is to put a tablespoon of bleach in a quart of water and let
it sit on the board several minutes. If you don't dilute it, the pH
will be too high for it to work efficiently. But when you dilute it,
you need a lot of water in contact for several minutes.

Baking soda brings the pH down to about 8 without diluting. The mixture
bleaches very quickly. To test, I mixed a teaspoon of bleach and a
teaspoon of baking soda in a glass. I dropped a little on a white
enamel surface with a brown stain I couldn't wash off. As soon as I
applied a drop with one hand, I wiped it off with the other. Contact
time was about two seconds, and the stain was completely gone where the
bleach had been.

If I still had a wooden board, I'd use bleach and baking soda to
disinfect it because I could rinse it off immediately.