can my knives handle bleaching?

T

tj schreiber

Joined
Sep 18, 2003
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hi, i live in wisconsin, and we have chronic wasting disease in the southern part of the state. according to the dnr, after butchering a deer, you should soak your knives for an hour in a water/bleach solution to kill the prions that cause cwd. i have a few knives that i'm concerned about damaging the handles. i have a marbles and an old ka-bar with leather ring handles, and my rose wood handled ast-34 buck folding alphas, and my good old 110's. i was thinking about uprading the blade on my 110 to bg-42, but if it can't handle the bleach, i might as well leave it alone. what are your thoughts on this situation? is there a better way to sterilize these knives? what do the guys in colorado do? they've been living with cwd a lot longer than we have.
 
Welcome to Bladeforums!

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I'll weigh in since I have some knowledge in the area of infection control in health facilities for more years than I care to admit.

The first thing to remember is that the way the infection is transmitted is extremely important. With the best intent, a previous poster provided a link to the CDC guidelines to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV by using a chlorine-based bleach solution. This is effective for many viruses - but usually only for viruses.

From reading up on CWD (see, for example, http://www.cwd-info.org and the section on Recommendations for Hunters), it is not known with certainty what the means the means of disease transmission is, but there is some evidence it is via prions (not a virus). Prions are NOT deactivated/sanitised/sterilised with chlorine bleaches. In fact, clinical recommendations in Britain/NZ/Australia (and I suspect in the US too) are that all intruments used in ANY invasive health procedure (which means all instruments used in dentistry, or for injections or any kind of minor/major surgical procedure) are to be considered as single use and must be disposed of immediately following use. This covers all patients with CJD (the human equivalent of "mad cow disease") since this disease is transmitted via prions. And prions cannot be deactivated or sterilised even in very long autoclave cycles. Only viruses, bacteria and fungi can be sterilised in autoclaves.

However, to confuse the issue, the Wisconsin Dept of Agriculture recommends chlorine-based for cleaning knives used in field dressing deer (see http://datcp.state.wi.us/ah/agriculture/animals/disease/chronic/pdf/venison_safety_2side.pdf). But this looks to be said on the basis that "it might be from a virus" even though there is little evidence to support this theory.

If it were me. I'd go out and buy the cheapest knife that would do the job (maybe even secondhand on eBay), and then throw it away after using it on the way home.

Sorry for the bad news - but it's probably not worth the risk to your health. Remember, it was only 15 years ago no-one thought "mad cow disease" could be passed on to humans through eating affected meat. And it was only 22 years ago that no-one knew that AIDS was caused by a virus. Play it safe, please.

Cheers
Phillip
 
I don't know about CJD, but mad cow is scary stuff. As far as I know, there's no way known to "kill" (denature?) the prions. The current protocol is to bury the surgical instruments after one use.
 
Prions are not living things, but mis-shapen proteins. They are extremely stable, and can withstand incineration and other forms of physical and chemical (ie. bleach) sterilization. They cause prion disease by causing other proteins to misfold and form plaques (it is not for sure whether the plaques are a cause or a symptom of the diease). Wash your knives after butchering your harvest, bleach them if you like (but this is more of a "feel good" measure than a necessity as far as prion disease is concerned). The best way not to get CWD is to not shoot sick deer, and then not eat CNS or organ tissue.
 
anybody know where i can get a good deal on a case of mora knives?:) my family argues with me about the seriousness of cwd, they think i'm paranoid. i e-mailed the dnr specialist for wisconsin, about this issue. if anyone is interested i'll post his reply. there have been no cases from my hunting area, the closest case is about 200mi away, but you just don't know. if i have to go with throw away knives, this is going to tear me apart, cause i love to show off my new knives during the season. i try to carry a different knife everyday. man, this cwd is really scary stuff, but the dnr is trying to soft pedal it, to keep people hunting. a few yrs ago, gander mountain was selling cwd test kits, where you sent in a sample and waited before you processed your deer.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here.... As far as I can see, if you eat a deer that's infected with prions that are not destroyed by the heat of cooking, sterilizing the knife you processed it with is the least of your worries.
 
according to the "experts" the prion is broken down by cooking. they also say that there has been no cases of transfer to humans. but i have read where a couple of hunters were eating the brain and they developed the human equivilent to cwd. that's why they say not to use a saw, only bone out the deer, and avoid all the lymph nodes, brain and nervous system tissue. i was wondering if i could boil or bake my knives in order to sterilize them? how hot can i go before messing with the blades temper? i was thinking i could remove the handles and wrap them in parachute cord. then i could just toss the cord and "cook" the knife.
 
CougarAllen and thestaber

You both make a very valid point, but I'd look at it a slightly different way. I don't have any figures to back this up, but it seems much less likely you will contract CWD from eating affected meat than from "direct injection" of prions into your body tissues. And one of the easiest means of "direct injection" I can think of is an accicental cut with an "infected" sharp knife.

Of course the risk of being affected is another matter and many people like to accept more risk than I do. For example, I won't go bungee jumping or parachuting, but many many people do and they just love it.

You'd have to be pretty unlucky to get infected with CWD, and you get to decide whether to accept the risk or not. But for me personally, I feel so sorry for all the unlucky people who were unaware trhey were taking on a serious risk, like:
* the 6 patients of a US dentist and the 5 patients from an Australian dermatologist who all contracted HIV/AIDS from being given infected novocaine from a multi-dose vial
* the thousands of people with haemophilia that have died from HIV/AIDS by being given infected "life-saving" blood transfusions
* the 160 people who contracted CJD in Britain prior to 1996 while the British Departments of Health and Agriculture were still insisting that "it was perfectly safe" for humans to eat meat from cattle with mad cow disease.

But you'd still have to be pretty unlucky! :)
 
tj schreiber said:
how hot can i go before messing with the blades temper? i was thinking i could remove the handles and wrap them in parachute cord. then i could just toss the cord and "cook" the knife.
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Any knife steel can be boiled without affecting the temper. Stainless steels can go a lot hotter than that.
 
Omniphile, I can see being concerned about cutting yourself while dressing an infected deer -- that could be worse than a needle stick. Cutting yourself later, though, after you've washed the knife and eaten the deer?
 
Hi CougarAllen. The problem as I see it is that it really isn't possible to be sure you have removed all the infectious particles (the prion or protein particles) from the knife. There is likely to be particles washed or wiped into the tiny gaps between and around the scales, into the nooks and crannies where the maker has stamped or etched his mark, sub-microscopic areas of pitting, even corners/edges in serrations etc. In health circles, this is called areas of bio-debris (among others). And since they cannot be guaranteed to be properly cleaned mechanically, chemically or biologically, nor can they sterilised in an autoclave at 132 degrees Celcius on a long cycle (or any other accepted means of sterilisation), they may still present a risk.

My primary occupation was being a dentist, and in my particular niche I treated patients with "special needs". It was a real shame having to throw away several thousands of dollars worth of equipment after having been used once on a patient with CJD (eg. even at government prices, a high speed dental drill cost about $800, a slow speed one $600, and then all the hand instruments, suturing needle-holders and extraction forceps at around $100-$150 each). But it was seen as a requirement - and this was all done because no-one could guarantee the equipment could be cleaned properly. If there was a way to do it, we wouldn't have wasted the money!

Now I know it is absolutely impossible to go through life without risk. I still drive my car, use public transport, fly on planes, ride elevators etc like most people. But I feel people should know what risks they are accepting.

It's just that if I was tjschreiber, I would take my knives and show them to my mates. But if I was going to field dress a deer from an area that is known to have CWD, I would use a throwaway knife, be very very careful while doing it, and not eat the meat. But that's just me.

Cheers
Phillip
 
and not eat the meat
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That seems to be a key part of the protocol, IMHO ... which might make some of us wonder why we're dressing the deer in the first place ... it's all very mysterious. :confused:
 
Cougar Allen said:
That seems to be a key part of the protocol, IMHO ... which might make some of us wonder why we're dressing the deer in the first place ... it's all very mysterious. :confused:
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Doh! Touche.

Cheers
 
thanks for all the "constructive" :) comments everyone. just to note, there haven't been any cases within 200mi. of my hunting area, but i still think of the possibility. maybe i'm just blowing it out of proportion. but i tend to be a safety nut, i wear a full face helmet on by motorcycle, with leather gloves, jacket and boots, even when it's hot(90+ in wi). i just like to take all the precautions that i can to help eliminate any-oops! and yes, i am in therapy for my obsessive/cumpulsive tendensies. now if i could only spellll...
 
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