How cleaning with wipes may actually SPREAD deadly bacteria, including MRSA

[snagglepuss]

John Oxford is emeritus professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London.

snip

researchers in Wales found that the use of wipes in hospitals may actually be spreading deadly bacteria, including MRSA. In a laboratory study, researchers at Cardiff University's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science tested seven commonly used wipes and found their ability to remove MRSA, Clostridium difficile and Acinetobacter after a ten-second swipe was patchy.

In fact, they found that the wipes even moved bacteria to other surfaces.


snip


Wipes should be used for no more than five swipes before they are discarded and certainly you need at least one for each square metre of surface area.







Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3209458/How-cleaning-wipes-actually-SPREAD-deadly-bacteria-including-MRSA.html#ixzz3jqllcw00
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[tularetom]

1. Don't use 'em to wipe your server...

[TexasProgresive]

3. "Ya cute hoor!"

Don't take this the wrong way-well maybe you know already know with a name like tularetom, for those who don't

You're a cute hoor.
Definition: You're some rogue, but really, you're brilliant.

[cwydro]

2. I've never gone in for any of this silly "disinfect every damn thing you touch."

I grew up in the 60's.

Yes, we washed our hands, and I still do that. But none of these alcohol wipes and disinfectant gels.

I remember riding horses out in the country, getting off them, eating our picnic lunch...no disinfectant in sight. Making mud pies, eating dirt and old apples that fell off a tree. Petting cats and dogs, chickens and ducks...hell we even had a monkey!

And there is nothing more dirty than a doggone monkey; I can tell you that lol. We would put food in our mouth and let him take it out with HIS mouth. Or his filthy little hand. Omg, you just do NOT want to know what he did with that hand...

I rarely was sick as a kid, and I'm never sick as an adult.

[closeupready]

4. I, too, was a foolish youngster once, but fecal contamination is real, lol.

As are blood-borne illnesses (ergo, band-aids, tampons, etc.), and those illnesses communicated via air droplets dispersed when people sneeze or cough.

Also, some current research seems to indicate that pathogens have actually EVOLVED to become far deadlier than they were. For example, salmonella - Frontline did a riveting documentary on this very phenomenon in the evolution of the salmonella germ.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/trouble-with-chicken/

Anyway, not trying to scare anyone, but just saying.

On edit, turns out, Frontline is actually showing this episode again, as an encore presentation, tonight. Well worth watching.

[cwydro]

7. I hear ya,

but I think my childhood (and my mom who used to cut mold off bread so she could keep using the loaf lol) gave me a hell of an immune system.

I might not recommend it for everyone.

[TexasProgresive]

11. My theory is that much of this pathogen evolution is the result of modern ag practices

The crowding of animals in close quarters and adding antibiotics in their feed to increase weight gain. The E.Coli that is so dangerous evolved in feed lots. regular e.coli would normally be killed by stomach acids but this strain is able to live in our stomach acid. The mechanism behind this is not antibiotics but feeding too much grain.

Cattle are designed to eat grass. When feed large amounts of grain they get a condition called acidosis. 2 things are happening in the feedlots; 1. the cattle have chronically acid rumens and they are so crowded that they are ingesting fecal matter. Over time the e.coli has evolved to survive an acid environment. If we eat under cooked beef, especially ground beef that is contaminated with this strain of e.coli it makes it through the stomach and infects our upper gut leading to illness and death. E.coli in the lower gut is normal, in the small gut it produces toxins that are absorbed into the blood stream.

[TexasProgresive]

5. "I rarely was sick as a kid, and I'm never sick as an adult."

That's because you have a properly challenged immune system, and maybe, healthy colonies of beneficial organisms. The mania of disinfecting everything is absurd. 1st it doesn't work, and B. the pathogens become resistant while the good bacteria die

[cwydro]

19. Agree completely.

I don't even remember the last time I had a cold.

I'm in my 50's.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Do you have any idea what's on a doorknob? Back when...

Lister and them found out about germs people were running around washing everything. They still got sick, though, and eventually gave it up for basic cleanliness and letting the body grow up with its immunities growing up with it.

[cwydro]

8. I don't want to know what's on a doorknob lol!

One thing I'm religious about is washing my hands when returning from the grocery store (or really, any time out in public), but I don't use alcohol or disinfectant wipes.

Just good old soap.

Yes, our bodies will take care of us if we just give them the chance.

[CTyankee]

9. I wash my hands before meals and before cooking meals. I think it is wise.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Of course. I wasn't suggesting we live like pigs...

just that excessive, and obsessive, germophobia has its downside.

[CTyankee]

12. I don't use anti-bacterial products. I do use hypallergenic bath soap and clothes detergent.

I carry the soap with me when I travel in a plastic soap container. the perfumes in soap were making my palms and soles of my feet itch like hell.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. I used to use glycerine soap and never use antibacterial soap...

that stuff eventually gets into the water supply and microbes gain immunity to it.

Maybe I should go looking for glycerine soap again...

[CTyankee]

16. I love the non-perfumed smell of the soap I use. Dove is the only brand I know of that

makes it. The lack of perfumes is actually pleasant and I feel just as clean.

[Warpy]

31. I used to be able to get a Mexican coconut oil based unscented bar soap

in health food stores that was absolutely wonderful. Since it went bye-bye some years ago, it's Dr. Bronner's for me. The peppermint makes my skin tingle and it's quite pleasant. It also doesn't screw up the environment and the labels are better than Jokes for the John. Rabbi Dr. Bronner was religiously insane but he started a really good soap company.

[TexasProgresive]

13. And wash your hands after handling raw meat and eggs.

As a child it was not really necessary. My grandfather would consume raw eggs regularly and his daughter used to horrify my cousins by eating raw hamburger meat. That was then. Now you can't trust these foods to be safe.

[hunter]

18. Yep, factory farm meat and eggs are a little scary.

I handle them almost like I used to handle blood samples when I worked in medical labs.

A few of my siblings have their own chickens, fed dinner table leftovers and whatever chickens find scratching about as they follow people around in the garden.

Those eggs don't worry me as much grocery store eggs, especially if I've been eating the same leftovers and have been digging around in the same dirt.

[cwydro]

21. We used to eat raw hamburger meat too.

I won't anymore, because I don't care so much for meat, but a friend of mine does it regularly.

[shanti]

34. Yup

When I was a kid (I'm 59) I used to snag a piece of raw hamburger when mom made recipes that used it. Needless to say, I don't do this anymore!

[closeupready]

25. Raw eggs and raw meat - that's, of course, Steak Tartare.

Wouldn't trust anyone to order it stateside, and would only do so in France or Italy if the serving establishment had a Michelin star, lol.

Carpaccio is a nice substitute, IMO.

[hunter]

14. I trust my aggressive body and gut microbes to destroy most pathogens.

Heh.

It is a strange feeling however, one that most non-military, non-field science, civilized people have ever experienced, to go a weeks or months without bathing, living rough. My favorites are warm ocean environments -- jump in the ocean, brush off the salt and sand as you dry.

I've done it most frequently on field science sorts of adventures. One's skin ecology reaches a sort of equilibrium and then you realize that's how your human ancestors experienced the world, and it's not so bad so long as there are no lice, or other invertebrates like bed bugs, fleas, or mosquitoes biting you as you sleep.

It seems life on the International Space Station is a little like that too. At best as a space resident you mist yourself and then dry yourself off.

[Warpy]

30. Alas, this is about hospitals, not home

and disinfecting surfaces in hospitals is a pretty big deal. What has happened is staff cut to the bone across the board, meaning there are inadequate staff to do all the bed baths the way they should be done, with plenty of soap, water, and scrubbing and inadequate housekeeping staff to disinfect surfaces at least daily. The wipes are problematic because there's nowhere to put them down except one of the surfaces that isn't getting disinfected unless the caregiver has had the foresight to look for the trash can and move it close, not easy when you've got 10 baths to do plus meds plus treatments.

As for antiseptic housekeeping, it's completely counterproductive. Kids are supposed to pick up bugs, get sick, and develop immunity to them. Being sick as a kid means you're going to be a lot healthier as an older adult, when a hard cold can more easily turn to pneumonia and the combination turn fatal. Yes, it's hard to see a usually energetic little kid down and out and miserable for a few days, but that experience is buying him a lifetime immunity to whatever it is he's got. The exception to this is the list of potentially deadly diseases we vaccinate against.

Yes, you can be too dirty to be healthy. You can also be too clean, especially with kids around.

[REP]

33. Every time I'm in the hospital, I come back with an additional infection

The only time I didn't was when I was put in an isolation ward (I was a Plastics patients, for a pasturella infection in my hand that was going to require surgery, but I also had a corona virus and existing kidney disease and they didn't know what the hell to do with me).

Most recently, went in with MRSA, left with Proteus mirabilis ... and I wasn't even cath'd. And a sinus infection.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

32. The sewers used to back up on my street after heavy rains when I was a kid.

We called it the Maple Avenue River. All the neighborhood kids would splash and play and ride our bikes through it. I tell this to my buddy who is an infectious disease Doctor - he cringes.

A buddy of mine in construction jokes about eating lunch with no place to wash hands before. "At least our fingertips are clean when he are done eating"

[Ilsa]

43. This is probably more about hospital protocols, not

What average citizens need to be doing. Hospitals and clinics can carry deadly microorganisms that might be resistant to treatment. Stuff that can wipe out a newborn nursery or patients with immune system problems or suppression. Infectious disease at the hospital level is a serious matter.

[SheilaT]

17. Simple washing with soap and water is

almost always the best thing to be doing.

I likewise grew up long enough ago that I got a properly challenged immune system. Unlike cwydro I got sick quite a bit until I was about 6, then rarely got sick afterwards.

[snagglepuss]

20. I too use only regular soap. What surprised me is that

"old-fashioned soap is antibacterial, helping to destroy fats in the cell walls of bacteria and viruses, causing them to break down.

In fact, soap may be low-tech, but it can destroy even the most deadly viruses; ebola is quickly destroyed this way

I always thought soap simply enables germs to slide off one's skin, I didn't thing soap actually kills germs.

[cwydro]

23. Well, Sheila, I did have the childhood illnesses common back then

like chicken pox. I got German measles too.

But I never got a lot of the other stuff, and for some reason I just never got colds or flus. (Hope I'm not tempting fate here lol). I got pneumonia when in the Air Force at 18, but got over it fast.

I agree with you on the soap and water thing.

But we agree on a lot here, ya know?

[SheilaT]

44. I wasn't even thinking of the pre-vaccine

childhood diseases, which I likewise got. I just seem to have gotten a lot of minor stuff when I was fairly young.

When I was little we lived in lower-income housing, lots of kids, lots of exposure. I've heard elementary school teachers comment that they can often tell the kids who didn't go to pre-school because they come down with every little thing.

And it is nice to have someone to agree with here on DU.

[Snobblevitch]

22. I don't see how this could happen.

Why would anyone use a cleansing wipe on more than one surface?

[SheilaT]

24. My guess is that it just doesn't occur to them it's a bad idea.

They think the cleansing wipe is super powerful.

[Snobblevitch]

27. I remember seeing a TV commercial for those cleaning wipes for

use in the kitchen. It showed a woman with a dirty sponge and then dissolved into showing her wiping the counter with a piece of raw chicken. I do know you're not supposed to wash or rinse chicken before cooking it. The water splashes around and causes more contamination.

[shanti]

36. I wash all meat (except ground) nder the faucet before cooking

Including chicken. It's not that hard to clean the sink when done. Hair, fecal matter...you never know what's on it.

[Snobblevitch]

38. I've been told it is more likely to spread bacteria by washing chicken

than the likelyhood of becoming I'll by eating properly cooked, unrinsed chicken.

[ManiacJoe]

39. There are right and wrong ways to do the washing.

[shanti]

40. Exactly.

I knew this guy from Trinidad, and he used to wash his chicken pieces in vinegar water before cooking. It didn't affect the taste at all.

[Snobblevitch]

41. I still think rinsing chicken under the kitchen faucet

creates more peoblems than it solves. However, the acidic water bath might be helpful. I'll stick to just cooking chicken properly.

[SheilaT]

45. I always rinse my chicken before cooking.

I seriously doubt that millions of kitchens are terribly contaminated because of those of us who do that.

I'm being reminded of the claim that you should NEVER cook the stuffing inside a turkey because of the supposedly high likelihood of contamination, or bacterial growth or some such. If that were really such a huge risk, every single year at Thanksgiving we'd be reading about the many visits to the ER from this. There is probably a slight danger, and there are often people who don't handle food properly. But the risk just isn't that great.

Meanwhile, since you've been cooking and consume the unrinsed chicken with no problem, there's no reason for you to change your ways. Nor for those of us who rinse.

[NV Whino]

26. They're talking about using wipes in hospitals

I volunteer, and we wipe down wheelchairs constantly.

[Gormy Cuss]

29. Yes, and that's where this matters the most.

Sanitation procedures should cut down on the rate of transfer, not increase it. Too often MRSA is a hospital-acquired infection and C.diff comes on its heels.

[snagglepuss]

35. What applies to hospitals applies at home too. Also people who are

in hospitals or have loved ones in hospitals need to be aware of cleaning procedures. If someone sees someone using one wipe to clean several surfaces they need to speak up.

[Eleanors38]

28. I leave clean-up to the spiders, geckos, and pissants.

[Syzygy321]

37. Thanks for the OP. Food for thought.

I work in a hospital. Couple years ago, they replaced normal keyboards with flat keyboards that beep when they want to be wiped with alcohol.

I dunno whether it helps - i doubt it - but the constant beeping and typos are hella irritating.

[smirkymonkey]

42. I know it's not ecologically correct, but I use wipes because I have this pathological

aversion to wet cloth and sponges. I will use dishwipes and towels, but then throw them in the laundry after using them once. I will not use sponges at all, I use brushes to wash dishes and bleach them after a few uses. I clean counters with wipes or spray them with bleach and wipe them down with paper towels.

There is something about wet cloth that just freaks me out. I don't really know where that came from but I just hate touching it. I will never use wipes twice however. I know it's bad, but I can't help it.