Can Washing Groceries Help Prevent COVID-19 Exposure? One Canadian Health Expert Thinks So

As a way to help combat exposure and spreading of COVID-19, Canadian health experts and local government officials are advising residents to wash some of their groceries after getting home from their respective supermarket.

“As a precaution, especially if there are vulnerable people in the household, wiping down [or] washing the groceries might not be a bad idea,” Dr. Jeff Kwong told Canadian outlet Global News.

Kwong is a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and is one of various health experts tracking the COVID-19 pandemic. He has talked previously about the threat to coronavirus exposure at grocers as researchers have learned more about the virus.

“We do know that the coronavirus can survive on plastic for up to 72 hours,” Kwong told Global News previously. So if a customer came into the store carrying coronavirus and sneezed or coughed on groceries, “there could be coronavirus on them.”

The concern of exposure has led to several reported “pranks” and incidents at grocery stores with customers coughing and sneezing on food. One Pennsylvania store reportedly threw out over $35,000 worth of food and a New Jersey man who claimed to have COVID-19 was charged with making terrorist threats after coughing on supermarket workers.

However, some officials have expressed caution at the idea of washing groceries due to the possible risks from soap and other disinfecting products.

“You should definitely not be washing your fruits and vegetables with soap before eating. Soap and water is meant for cleaning hands” Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety Director Jeff Farber told Global News. “In fact, [ingesting] soap has been known to cause things like vomiting or diarrhea in humans. It’s definitely not a good practice.”

Farber said rinsing fruits and vegetables in cold water is typically enough to clean them before consumption.