Decontaminating a used knife?

B

Bender

Joined
Jan 12, 2000
Messages
4
A little while ago I purchased a used knife and started wondering how safe this thing might be with all the worries of contamination (ie. blood born disease, animal diseases, etc). We all know how easy it is to accidentally cut ourselves with sharp toys. Is there an easy way to decontaminate used knifes by bleaching, or using special chemicals. I was thinking of removing the handles and autoclaving the blade but since I don't have access to an autoclave? Thanks for your response.
 
Steam it in a pressure cooker for abt 20 minutes. That will kill whatever was/is living.
Do not forget, also the handle might be contaminated...

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D.T. UTZINGER
 
Micro Wave It!

Or, use rubbing alcohol, then dry and oil throughly!

Mark
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Can you put steel in a micro-wave? I know you can't with aluminum foil
Bob

[This message has been edited by Strider (edited 04-19-2000).]
 
Bender; soak the knife in a weak solution of bleach about 10% volume to volume will do. Then just use dishwashing (preferably antibacterial) detergent to scrub it. Then put it in the dishwasher. The disease you would be most likely to catch (in the extremely unlikely event you DID catch anything) would be hepatitis. HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases don't survive long outside of the human body. Tularemia is extremely rare, and IIRC, doesn't survive long outside of the body well either.

Walt Welch MD
 
Bender,

A 5% bleach/water mixture is what hospitals use for many decontamination chores. Bleach is one of the best decontaminants known. It will kill just about any virus, bacteria, and fungus among us. (Sorry, I just couldn't resist)

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Dave
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Attention: Some assembly may be required. Batteries not included.
 
Originally Posted by Walt Welch MD: Tularemia is extremely rare, and IIRC, doesn't survive long outside of the body well either.
Click to expand...

Walt, what is Tularemia and IIRC? Never heard of those terms before. Hope this wasn't a silly question.
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Mark
 
Ditto to what Dr. Welch said. A 10% dilution of standard houshold bleach will kill anything you need to be afraid of. For external use only.
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I worked at a Plasmapheresis center for a few years in college. That was the cleaner we used on all our equipment that would handle it. Beds were washed down with a quickly evaporating spray or wipe similar to Lysol on steroids. Bloodborne pathogens suck. My grandfather contracted Non A, NonB Hepatitis (now known as Hepatitis C) from some bad blood in the mid 80's. Lot's of liver damage before they caught it. Carrying a small bottle of gelled alcohol (Suave, Lysol, Dial, IsaGel, etc.) is always a smart move these days too.
 
Killing germs is not a problem. The problem is to do it without damaging the material you are trying to clean. Bleach is very hard on rubber, wood, and leather. Think before you attack. You want your disinfectant to get down into cracks and porus surfaces to do its job. A token sprinkling is not enough. On the other hand you don't want to bleach the color out of your handle or degrade the strength of a rubbery grip. I tend to use a commercial disinfectant instead of bleach on soft materials. I don't use heat on things like leather. You may want to test a small patch or a similar material before you dump bleach or alcohol on something.

If you have a sheath knife you may need to sanitize the inside of the sheath. This is not easy.
 
Originally posted by Walt Welch:
HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases don't survive long outside of the human body. Walt Welch MD
Click to expand...

STD's? What are you doing with your knife?
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Another option is to go to a hotel or other commercial situation where people congregate. I worked in a hotel for a few weeks one summer, and the cleaner we used on bathrooms listed a huge number of diseases (including HIV, et al) that it would kill, and it never seemed to discolor stuff we sprayed.

--JB

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e_utopia@hotmail.com
 
oh, dear goodness....

That knife will be pretty safe anyway. All of the nasty bugs (AIDS, herpes, etc.)require a wet environment or they will dry out. But to be on the safe side, and kill less nasty bugs like S.Aureus or C.Tetanus all you really need to use is common rubbing alcohol.

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EdRozen-On the cutting edge of finding out what the cutting edge is....
 
Clorinated tap water kills HIV on contact.

The real risk here is something on the blade, which is the part that you're going to get cut by. I can't, off hand, think of a blade material that would be damaged by a wiping with rubbing alcohol. Be very careful about blades with ink markings on them though. Those should not be treated with alcohol or bleach. UV sterilization could be used for some materials, though I'd hate to subject many handle materials to strong UV light. Gas sterilization might be a good option.

Mark was on the right track with his microwave idea. The ultimate solution would be irradiation. Irradiation is a wonderful technology and I really wish the @#*% environmentalists would stop their whinning about it. The food, or knife, does not become radioactive. Only the germs are killed.

More and more, we hear about tons and tons of food being recalled and destroyed because there's a possibility that it might have been contaminated with something. Irradiation would save many many tons of food and prevent many many illnesses and deaths every year.

I'd be perfect for Bender's knives too.



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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
 
Clorinated tap water kills AIDS?
You'd think more people would be doing it in the shower!
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If the materials your knife is made of can stand hot water (steel, micarta, G10, etc) just a trip through your home dishwasher is sufficient. Use the temperature boost button (about 150 deg. F, or 65 deg. C. for those outside of the US). This temperature combined with the high pH (caustic) nature of dishwashing compound will kill about anything you could be worried about. Natural materials probably need a chemical treatment in a weak antibacterial agent. Remember, the death of microbiological cells is a time/temperature/concentration relationship. A weak sterilizing solution at high temeprature or long contact time is about as good as a high concentration for a short time, or cold.

As far as radiation is concerned, it is only legal on spices, as an antisprouting agent on some seed products, and as a pasteurizing agent for meat. That means a surfact treatment only, not deep tissue penetration. There are side effects of radiation treatment on fresh meat, like oxidized (rancid) fat flavors. We will get there but it will take a while.

Bruce Woodbury
 
Gollnick; you may be correct about chlorinated tap water killing HIV, but the protocol decided for addicts to clean syringes and needles used a higher concentration of antiseptic. It is a 10% solution of household bleach to tap water, IIRC. This suggests to me that chlorinated tap water might not be the best thing for eliminating HIV; further, I recall a pathologist on the forum a while back who commented on surface sterilization. He said several pathogens were unaffected by alcohol, and dilute bleach is what they used in the path lab. Walt
 
Walt, during my required EMS Rides last year. (Getting certified again after too many years. Don't know if being certified is certifiable. Is it?) All of the services I rode with used bleach/water solution for decon. of all surfaces that would take getting wet. Some was spray and wipe. Others was soak and scrub. Depended on level of contanimation. Spray and wipe for ANY patient contact. Soak and scrub for anything else.


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Dwight

It's a fine line between "a hobby" and "mental illness".
 
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