Health Dept light finds germs?

Ladies and gentlemen,

Is there some kind of light that Health Dept inspectors use to find germs or contamination?

Steve

Black light.

Individual bacterium obviously can't be seen by the unaided eye, but clusters/colonies of most microbes are more easily seen with shorter wavelength lights, like the UV that Ken mentioned. Blue-cast LEDs are better than regular wide-spectrum lights, but not as good as UV. (Most people are more likely to have a blue-cast LED handy.)

get a black light for yourself and go through your own house. You can even clean it and then go through it at night. Go through the bathroom, around the toilet, sinks, kitchen, walls, refrigerator, etc. You will be disgusted.

I am going to make sure that I am not contaminated....by a liberal dose of Vodka.....Bye

I have never seen a health dept. inspector use a light during their inspection in either CA. or MT. They do make a little test stick that can be swabed on a surface. It changes to alert the presence of contamination. I have not seen these used either except when investigating a report of food poisoning.

Hi,

I don't do inspections in restaurants, but I have work in quality and food safety in food manufacturing for 25 years, so here is what I can tell you.

UV lights are generally use to look for rodent urine, which fluoresces under uv light (other body fluids do this too which is why uv is often used for forensic analysis.) It won't do anything for bacteria. Since the food plants I have worked in do an excellent job of controlling rodents UV lights are not normally used in the facility, however we keep on on the dock for checking incoming materials if we have reason to suspect contamination.

The swabs mention in another response don't change colors to detect contamination, you use them sample a surface then send them off to a microbiology lab for analysis. Not sure what health inspectors for restaurants do, but a lot of food plants will use swabs on a periodic basis to monitor their sanitation. In recent years a lot of this has been replaced with units that detect ATP, the energy transport chemical found in all living cells. This systems use a reaction with firefly enzyme and the ATP, which is detected using a specially designed instrument. You can tell if a surface is clean in a few seconds, but if it is dirty you don't know if it is bacteria, food residue, or a combination of these.

Typically flashlights are used in food plant inspections for illuminating all the dim and dark places where you need to inspect like the inside of equipment, under pallets, etc. I would think most health inspectors would use one the same way.