Can a common pantry staple kill bacteria? Possibly, according a paper recently published in mBio. Researchers mixed acetic acid–the main ingredient in white vinegar–with suspensions of bacterial cultures and found that a exposure times as little as 20 minutes reduced the viable bacterial population by 710. The researchers then performed the same experiment, this time swapping out hydrochloric acid for the vinegar; they noted no bactericidal effect. Mycobacterium tuberculosis required a longer kill time (30 minutes vs. 20 minutes) to reach a 810 reduction in population.
These results suggest that vinegar could be used as a cheap-yet-effective disinfectant in resource-poor laboratory settings.
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