How Hard Water Sabotages Your Sanitation Chemicals (And How to Fix It)

Water management in food processing is essential to ensuring the safety of employees and consumers. Disinfection and sanitation are other vital components, but they often influence each other. Hard water in food processing, while common, affects the performance of chemical cleaners. The workforce must recognize the dangers of using sanitizers on hard water — even if they are industry-approved — and implement strategies to mitigate their adverse effects.

Where Hard Water in Food Processing Comes From

Hard water is a persistent problem in the U.S., indicating calcium carbonate concentrations of 121 milligrams per liter or more. The presence of typical hard-water minerals is not a public safety concern for food manufacturers, but it affects how they clean and sanitize. Understanding the many points of entry is the first step in solving the problem.

It enters most structures from groundwater sources. As water travels through the soil and other rocks, it becomes laden with additional nutrients and minerals, such as magnesium and calcium. The density of these can vary based on numerous factors, like geography and how far the water has to travel. It also depends on the region’s and the company’s filtration and treatment infrastructure.

How Does Hard Water Ruin Food Sanitation Chemicals

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlines what food-grade sanitation chemicals are approved for use on contact surfaces and equipment. They include chlorine and peroxyacetic acid (PAA), with restrictions being even more noticeable in organic-certified organizations. However, many of these react poorly to hard water.

Common surfactants in sanitation chemicals are ineffective against most divalent cations. When hard-water ions interact with the active ingredients, they can form soap scum. The residue can accumulate quickly, reducing the effectiveness of cleaning agents.

The salt formation is insoluble, so other tools and sanitation chemicals are required to remove it. While it may appear as a mere visual distraction on a food-grade surface, the presence of the insoluble precipitate suggests the disinfectant had a reduced rate of kill against bacteria and other harmful microorganisms.

If biofilms and limescale form, technicians may feel incentivized to use more of their cleaners to remove them. However, research shows that sometimes increasing the amount of the chemical can also have an adverse effect. Tests using 200 parts per million of chlorine, 400 ppm of quaternary ammonium compound and 160 ppm of PAA led to a greater presence of Listeria on stainless steel surfaces. Neglecting targeted cleaning methods could lead to increased foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls.

Additionally, cleaners such as chlorine and iodine-based options also react poorly to hard water in other ways. Hard water’s acidity can reduce the effectiveness of chlorine by making it less present in an active state. This reduction in efficacy is not visible to the naked eye, making it a deceptively common problem in food processing facilities.

How to Execute Water Management in Food Processing Facilities

If the workforce wants to abate concerns caused by hard water, they must institute a robust water management plan. It must be multipronged, including behavioral shifts and technological implementations to be as comprehensive as possible. Otherwise, it would introduce hazards into the workspace, which would go against the most prominent safety controls, including the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and Good Manufacturing Practices.

Use Cold Storage

Sanitation and disinfection are required parts of workflows to keep food clean and nutritious, but so is the way it is stored. The appropriate storage solution amplifies the effectiveness of all cleaning efforts by preventing bacterial reproduction, machinery failures and scale buildup. It only takes one hour of downtime for an organization to lose thousands of dollars, so leveraging storage to prevent additional cleaning is crucial. Maintaining storage equipment is even more important.

Install Water Softeners and Purification

Companies can remove minerals in the water they use before it hits the production floor. Ion-exchange water softeners and reverse osmosis technologies are among the industry’s most reliable methods for removing calcium and magnesium from water. They take both out of the equation so sanitation chemicals can work at maximum efficiency.

Experiment With Different Formulations

Teams can use conventional sanitizing chemicals with revised ingredients and compositions to fight against hard water if the organization is unable to soften or filter it. Chelating agents are powerful additives because they bind to minerals, preventing them from interfering with active ingredients. One common chelant is citric acid, which may cost more to implement, but it could be cost-effective in the long term by preventing other issues.

Water Quality As the Foundation of Food Safety

Limescale buildup is more than unsightly — it has profound implications for poor sanitation in food manufacturing. Water hardness is a greater health threat in these environments than most realize because it is typically not a concern in other circumstances. However, food experts have a responsibility to understand why their chemicals may not work as well when interacting with hard water. Then, they must collaborate with leadership and local utilities to prevent its transmission into food facilities and protect citizens.