Residents impacted by power outages advised to check for, discard unsafe food
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (June 14, 2022) – City Health Commissioner Vickie Ionno is urging people who lost power during last night’s storm to think about the contents of their fridges and freezers.
Vickie Ionno says if the outage was for an extended period (more than a couple of hours), it may be time to discard them since cold foods that get too warm are no longer safe to consume.
“I have a whole chart available here at the health department and we’ll post it on our Facebook page so people can try to go there and look at food temperatures, but it won’t take but a few hours for food to not be edible.”
She recognizes that no one wants to throw away a week’s worth of groceries, but says failing to do so puts you and others in your household at risk.
“And I get that. You’ve spent a lot of money. Things are very expensive already, and you don’t want to waste if you can help it, but you can get very sick from a food-borne illness if it’s been out of temp too long.”
Ionno says keeping your fridge and freezer doors closed as much as possible or adding ice to them can help keep cold foods at a safe temperature for longer, although it’s probably too late for anyone still without power.