Black mould on corn on the cob - worried

[WhatIFoundInTheFridge]

I've just found a corn on the cob languishing at the back of my vegetable drawer in the fridge...it's just over a month old and has black mould all over it, along with a little pink mould.
Has this ever happened to anyone? I'm stressing about aflatoxin contamination... panicking that I've been eating stuff from the fridge for the last few weeks that is contaminated with dangerous, cancer causing mould spores. 😟
Does anyone know if aflatoxins can appear after harvest, in the fridge?

Yes. Just chuck it out and give the drawer a wipe.

Lakeland do some really good salad bags that preserve fresh food for ages beyond it's usual lifespan. Mine are coloured green but have had them a few years and don't know if they've made any changes to the product. They just look like normal plastic bags but the material must have some magic ingredient that really works, especially if you dampen a piece of kitchen roll to cushion the food, then suck out the air to make it vacuum-packed and fasten it closed with a food clip.

This has just reminded me that I have a melting cucumber in my salad draw.

For us it's usually packs of tortillas/burger buns/hot cross buns etc found breeding new life in the back of cupboards... May or may not have found 2 month expired goods strolling around in there not so long ago. None of us have died yet.

The salad crisper in my fridge is where vegetables go to die. Never thought about contamination beyond wiping it down and chucking anything furry or withered.

I'd never heard of aflatoxin before but I looked it up and feel like there are other, more pressing carcinogens to be overly concerned.

Happens weekly here. We're all fine

DH does this but I'm far more likely to eat out of date food than he is 😂

Drives me crackers though, how hard is it to pull the old stuff out and put the new at the bottom. I'm finding more and more stuff going off as there's no dates on any veg now so I don't know what's this weeks shop and last weeks if the meal plan goes awry and there's a glut to use up.

Survived 3 days out of date cooked prawns without incident over the weekend though.

OP you will be fine. You'd probably have been fine if you'd washed it and cooked it too.

It's definitely happened to me..I thought you were going to say you ate some of it before you noticed.

Op, I'm sure you'll be fine.

That's what the salad drawer is for, surely? I fished what I think had been am end of cucumber out of mine this week. It was absolutely minging. Hasn't really been salad weather tbf.

This is your OCD talking. You should not be concerned by this at all. I would not enjoy finding this but I know it would not harm my health. Try to distract yourself and forget about it now if you can xx

Keep them in a little bit of water enough to cover their roots. If you only use the green part it will grow back too.

Thank you everyone.
I dearly wish I didn't know about aflatoxins, but then not enough about them to know when / where / how, precisely, they occur.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

I only knew about peanut aflatoxins. Didn't know corn on the cob could be affected. More likely just to be bog standard mould

Put them in a big glass of water, root side down and keep in fridge.

Whoops, already suggested!

I wouldn't worry about it if you didn't eat anything touching it (and even if you did, I'm sure you'd still be fine). I take out my fridge drawers once a week the day before shopping to check for expired goods and to wash in hot soapy water. It's quick and helps to avoid this!

So alafatoxin contamination doesn’t come from black mould. It’s from aspergillus - which comes in lots of colours. You can only get sick from it if you eat the mould. Contamination is usually when a factory making say corn flakes grinds up and then makes corn flakes using mouldy sweet corn. So you are safe. You cannot get alafatoxins in you unless you eat that corn. I don’t think you’re inclined to attempt that.

“Black mould” usually refers to stachybotry chartarum mould as that’s the toxic black mould that gives off spores that makes you sick. Not at all likely you have that on your sweet corn.

Just toss the mouldy corn, and take the time to clean out your fridge, toss anything past it’s use by, wipe the inside out with some sort of disinfectant. Vinegar or bleach are also anti-fungal.

It's from Waitrose, it'll be fine

@Jobabob 😁

as per pp, they're metabolites of the mould, don't eat the mould, you'll be fine.

& clean your fridge

@Onnabugeisha Thank you for taking the time to reply. So you couldn't ingest aflatoxins from spores alone?

Vegetables and meat regularly find their furry green/black demise in there. Dairy grows a new pink jacket. Once we find it it gets binned

The last time the fridge was actually cleaned was the day before we moved in. We moved in two years ago.

No. You can’t ingest spores. You can only inhale them. Plus aflatoxins coming from aspergillus means you would have to disturb the mould for it to let off any spores at all. While it’s sitting there on the corn, it’s quite happy to spread on and into the corn. It doesn’t emit spores unless disturbed. In addition, it takes quite a lot to be toxic. Spores from this mould are harmless to healthy humans (no mould allergy or asthma).

One type of aflatoxin can be transmitted by skin contact. But I see you are cleverly wearing gloves. So no worry there.