GRAND RAPIDS (WZZM) - It's the second most common food illness in the United States and it makes more than a million people sick every year.
Salmonella is something you can get right in your own kitchen.
When you ingest the salmonella bacteria it's usually through contaminated surfaces. Your hands come in contact with it and then you touch food or utensils that you put in your mouth. No matter how clean you think you're keeping your food preparation or how many times you wash your hands, still it's probably not enough.
Inside a Northeast Grand Rapids house is a very unsuspecting stay at home mom.
We brought Fran Matheny some chicken and asked her to prepare it, but what she doesn't know is before we got there we rubbed the chicken down with a product called Glow Germ. It's used in elementary school sciences classes to teach kids about germs.
As Fran prepared the chicken she washed her hands twice. Using paper towels instead of a dishtowel and even refused to touch the chicken again as she placed in the dish. Now that it's is in the oven it's time to check out her prep area.
And we reveal to her the purpose of our visit is to track the bacteria left behind by the chicken.
We darkened the kitchen and examined everything under the black light. As expected the cutting board and the chicken glowed.
Then we checked where all that glowing bacteria spread.
The black light revealed it splattered six to ten inches around the cutting board and was transferred to the paper towel that Fran wiped her hands on after she washed them.
And Fran's hands weren't any cleaner, "Oohhhhh!! My goodness that is soooo gross !"
It's everywhere, and there was one place the bacteria splattered that even surprised me, little tiny specks of bacteria were all over Fran's sweater and her jeans.
And what about that water faucet? It's all over there too and the soap container.
So after that little experiment Fran had a few questions for Laura Bell, the food safety expert we brought with us from Metro Health, "I want to know if when I'm cleaning it does it smear it all over or how long does it last?" Bell says "What I usually use in my home setting is antibacterial wipes or Clorox wipes." And don't forget freezing the chicken doesn't kill the bacteria, "No it just makes it go into hibernation," says Bell.
Now for Fran's hand washing lesson. "You want to use antibacterial soap at the sink. The proper way is to actually get your hands wet first so you can get a proper lather. And go all the way up to at least your wrists."
And wash for 10 to 15 seconds.
If you use a hand towel like Fran it should get washed every day.
We check Fran's hands again but they still have bacteria on them. "Oh look there's still some left on that and I don't even think I did that nail."
Fran needs to scrub them at least one more time and her kitchen. While she does that, I ask our food safety expert about just how sick you can get from salmonella. "We may feel be not feeling well a little queasy stomach every once in a while. Older adults and children they can definitely start vomiting diarrhea fever cold chills."
It's a bacterial infection that lasts up to seven days and can affect the function of your bowels for months. It's so common that nearly a million Americans get sick from salmonella bacteria every year.
The easiest way to make sure that doesn't happen is by keeping everything clean.
We check in one last time with Fran. Our black light shows she passed the test. Her kitchen is clean and so are her hands.
By Valerie Lego