High Counts Yeast and Mold in vents

Hello,

We are starting to see high counts on our Y/M plates that we do on a monthly basis. We recently acquired an older building that has an older ventilation system. We make products in a high temperature room that produces moisture , which we think is accumulating in these vents and creating a higher count for Y/M.

We think we can Fog the vents to clean them and hopefully this will reduce the counts but we were also wondering what is the best chemical to use for Y/M ?

I would like to know what people use for prevention on walls in production rooms (mainly ones that are also outside walls) and what people use to clean the Y/M if seen. Some say quat is the best, but I think otherwise.

Any comments would be helpful! thanks!

This is a tough one. In a previous job, I was having yeast and mold issues in buttermilk in a similar type of environment (wet). We had the HVAC guys come in to clean the vents, and we increased the frequency with which our maintenance team changed filters on the HVAC. Do you have filters on your vents? How often are they being changed? When I absolutely have to kill everything, quat is my go-to. I avoid using it on product-contact surfaces due to phage issues (we are making cheese). I would recommend using quat but maybe someone else here has a better suggestion. Good luck, yeast and mold is a beast to deal with. We use an organic approved chlorine sanitizer for environmental sanitizing, although this is not my preference (I like iodine). I am interested to see what other people think. 

Thanks for the input!

It's an older system so the filters are a bit different to change. They get changed quarterly which we might need to up that frequency.

We were considering using Quat, but then were leaning more towards bleach - any thoughts on that?

We are in a similar production with butter and cheese products . Do you do anything as more of a preventive control verses reacting to the issue? I would assume just change the filters more often?

Hello,

 

We are starting to see high counts on our Y/M plates that we do on a monthly basis. We recently acquired an older building that has an older ventilation system. We make products in a high temperature room that produces moisture , which we think is accumulating in these vents and creating a higher count for Y/M.

 

We think we can Fog the vents to clean them and hopefully this will reduce the counts but we were also wondering what is the best chemical to use for Y/M ?

 

I would like to know what people use for prevention on walls in production rooms (mainly ones that are also outside walls) and what people use to clean the Y/M if seen. Some say quat is the best, but I think otherwise.

 

Any comments would be helpful! thanks!

Hi antond,

I assume you are referring to settle plates/standard media/standard incubation temperature/ cfu/cm2/hour.

So what do you regard as "high" ?