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by Zack on February 12th, 2009

Zack

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Out of those 99.9% of the germs that I just got rid of, where did those 1% go so I can kill them too?

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  • by leetmeat on November 15th, 2009

    leetmeat

    1. Killing 99.9% of microbes might be ok for countertops and floors, but may not be the best idea for some things, such as your skin.

    2. You'll never kill 100% of the microbes in any given spot. There are always resistant ones that you aren't going to be able to kill left. For example, you wouldn't be able to kill Deinococcus radiodurans, aptly named "Conan the Bacterium," with much anything. Throw whatever chemicals you want on on the countertops, you could even irradiate them with a GAMMA RAY BURST (which would kill all of us in the process) and they would sit there going about their business. You see, Conan will happily live on radioactive uranium, and eat bleach, rocks, organics, and a number of other things if it has too. The first time they found "Deinococcus radiodurans" it was in a can of spoiled meat that had been irradiated with radioactive cobalt, which was thought to emit enough ionizing radiation to kill any living microbe... or so we thought.

    So don't stress out over it. There are always going to be survivors in any attempt to disinfect. The ironic thing is the more we try to keep our homes and bodies clean with disinfectants or sanitizers, the more we give resistant microbes a chance of developing and thriving. This is why you should ALWAYS finish that round of antibiotics you get from the doctor when you are sick. It's usually a cocktail of 3+ antibiotics that shotgun whatever bacteria you have. So even if it has or develops resistance to one, the other two will kill it. Just take the whole course of them so there are no potentially resistant bacteria left(penicillin and many other antibiotics no longer work due to resistances, dis is serious bizzness).

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    • Thank you leetmeat.

      Zack

      by Zack on November 15th, 2009

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