Why does everyone wanna use Bleach?

Having supported bleach for neutralizing bloodborn pathogens I'll talk about my real world. I don't run into much blood other than my own. I usually don't use my EDC on raw meat. My blade cleaning in order of frequency is: wiping on a dry paper towel, wiping on a wet paper towel, washing with detergent solution (usually antibacterial), and if convenient wiping with alcohol. I keep alcohol in my office so that happens frequently.
 
Gollnick,
Well rsecue workers have to do a lot more than cut that seatbelt,and they most certainly will be inside that car working on the victim.Stabilize the neck,apply a k.e.d or backboard,apply o2,check vitals,treat as you go,and maybe even stop the bleeding,once their packaged then they'll be removed from the car.

The last thing I want in anyones hand in a car cramped with victims and rescue workers is a knife btw,thats why I use an emt shears and throw them away if they get bloody.

A sharp knife with someone elses blood on it,hell 20 pair of gloves won't protect you.Leave the knife in your pocket and we'll all be better off.
 
Lone Hunter is Correct in the fact that we use EMT shears (Super Scissors)more often then not.... but this thread is about bleach and it's use as a disinfectant. Plus I used to work Coronors Service where we used a knife a lot more frequently.

Brownshoe, I am not going to get into it with you again, Hep "C" will last 2 weeks in a dried on blade bloodstain, It will fester like Mold and stay alive on the blade which is in your nice warm pocket acting as an incubator.

HIV/AIDS/Hep "C" Testing should be a yearly thing if you have multiple sexual partners..... each of these diseases has a 2-6 month incubation time in which you could test a false negative. IF you think your partner was infected you should bump that down to every 6 months.

Shane, glad to see another canadian here from 1911forum, Alcohol Will sterilize clean insturments IF gross contamination is removed from them first.

What the hell, i will get into it with brownshoe... SARS is transmitted thru airbourne and touch, proper handwashing techniques limits the spread of the disease for the most part with properly fitted filtration mask will limit the airbourne transmital. That is all part of the Cross Contamination and keeping things disinfected theme we have going on in this thread.

I don't know where you got this "3x the health care workers where infected" but your numbers are wrong, first and foremost with the SARS cases was that hong kong and china dd not inform the world until AFTER the CDC and Canadian Health picked up the disease and started to trace it back to patient zero. 1 health care worker dying in Canada over the SARS is not 3x the Asian Number.

Some people are more susceptable to disease and sickness..... I assume that is what happened there. I live and work in the Health Care Industry here in Canada, I have recieved most of the SARS ALERT paper that was handed outto our profession.... I doubt you could know more then me on the subject of canadians and sars.

Some people just don;t get it, I could care less what you think of me cleaning and disinfecting my knives, I do it for my own personal safety after they have been soiled by someone elses blood.
 
Sounds like another reason to carry a shot of vodka with ya everywhere ya go... sorry officer i use it to sterilize my knife!

;)
 
Here's a simple question for you:

If you were going to have surgery, would you like the doctor to use impliments that are sterile, or would it be ok with you if they used stuff that they just sort of wipped off after the last surgery they did, that looks clean anyway?



Hmmm I want it steril but I'm sure they wont use bleach to make the tools steril !!!! Like i said If you wanna use it go right ahead !
I'm just saying I would never put it on my blade nor recomend for someone else to do it ! I aint trying to upset you guys but thats just what I think :)
 
Originally posted by Kennieyk
Hmmm I want it steril but I'm sure they wont use bleach to make the tools steril !!!!
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In that you are WRONG, most places soak the insturments and clean the gross contaminants off in a bleach soloution before putting them in the autoclave, a bleach soloution or a ermicide soloution depending on where you go. I have seen both.

The autoclave is just the final step in a sterile insturment.... you still have to decontaminate before it gets in there.
 
I used to work for Belle Applications Corp., a chemical company. I was a tech and sales rep. We sold what you refer to as "bleach", which is chlorine, one of the best known sterilizers known. And it is required by law for many sterilization applications. It is also desiginated as a insecticide. Yes, the stuff is a good killer. I won't go into detail with required applications by law, and say also that rinsing the cleaned knife with hot water pretty much kills the chlorine. Chlorine also dissapates, which is getting rid of itself, too. Cheap and good, pretty useful, for a few pennies.
 
In that you are WRONG, most places soak the insturments and clean the gross contaminants off in a bleach soloution before putting them in the autoclave
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Very often, the instrument is completely cleaned, chemically sterilized (often in what is essentially a chlorine bleach solution even if it has a fancy brand name) and sealed in a plastic bag before it's autoclaved. When the autoclave finishes, the instruments in those sealed packages can be stored for many months in a non-sterile environement and will remain sterile. They'll be removed from those sealed packages just minutes before surgery.
 
Why not use Zippo fuel on your knife, if the handle can stand it.... I am not quite sure but do not think it would ruin the heat treatment.

Wouldn't an ordinary oven be able to act as a sterilizer? You place the knife on a wooden plank, in order to distrubute temperature evenly, you enquire wich temp. the knife can take an leave it in some time :-)
 
Ok so maybe they do use bleach ,,, but they also probly dont use certain steels like they use in knives. I also think a pressure cooker is better then bleach . Even if there is blood there nothing would survive the heat. And you can control the temp also .after the pressure cooker wash it with soap and hot water. I have had to sterlize many things and a pressure cooker always did the trick.
 
what you refer to as "bleach", which is chlorine,
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Actually household bleach solution is not chlorine, it's a solution of about 5 wt.% Sodium Hypochlorite in water which does contain elemental chlorine. Actual chlorine is gas at room temperature that you wouldn't want to mess with 'cause it'll burn your lungs, eyes, etc. I'm a Chemical Engineer that worked in the Pulp and Paper industry. The Mill where I worked use several types of "chlorine" compounds for bleaching. Like, chlorine gas (tons of it), we also made our own chlorine dioxide solution and sodium hypochlorite (10%) solution. All chlorine compounds are very corrosive even to stainless. We used (expensive) titanium or plastic lined pipe and equipment to handle it. Granted that your weak (5 wt% sodium hypochlorite) bleach solution, being 95% water is not so corrosive especially if rinsed aferwards. Would I rinse my knife with it? I would avoid it where possible, because the cholride ions could likely stay in the crevises of you're knife and possibly cause corrosion. Just like a gun, I would keep cholrinated bleach compounds away from metal that I cared about. You might look into other disinfectants such as solutions with phenol compounds. I'm not an expert in disinfectants so I don't know what there are. Using bleach is probably OK if you have to, and if rinsed and dried well after. A key point is that corrosion doesn't go without water. So drying and keeping dry your metal follwing wetting will help a lot regardless of whether or not chlorinated ions are present.
 
If you must use bleach, don't soak it long and rinse well. Don't forget that regular use of bleach can damage plastics over time.
 
Originally posted by Westicle
In that you are WRONG, most places soak the insturments and clean the gross contaminants off in a bleach soloution before putting them in the autoclave, a bleach soloution or a ermicide soloution depending on where you go. I have seen both.

The autoclave is just the final step in a sterile insturment.... you still have to decontaminate before it gets in there.
Click to expand...


I hate to say this but i cant believe places soak metal in bleach ! If you could post a link or something about this I would like to read more about that . Why do you still need to decontaminate befor you put it in a pressure cooker ? The steam heat will remove anything on the metal . They might wash it or scrub it then pressure cook it . But i dont think they soak stuff in bleach .
 
My question is: What's your issue with bleach, kennieyk? Do you actually think that it wil eat your knife to nothing? Or does the potential of even molecular erosion of the surface steel keep you up nights? :D

My take: If I need to disinfect my blades, for whatever reason, bleach seems the affordable, quick and effective way to go. Followed by a rinse in water.

And I'll sleep 10 hours tonight worried about the steel.;)
 
Originally posted by Kennieyk
But i dont think they soak stuff in bleach .
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Why does what you think about this subject?

Mr. Westicle is a paramedic. He works in this environment.

Me? What do I know? Not much. But I do know a woman who's in charge of caring for surgical instruments at a hospital and another who is in charge of infection control at another.

In the operating room, most instruments are, after use, immediately put into a bucket of what is essentially bleach solution. Later, they're mechanically scrubbed to remove debris. Each is inspected carefully. Then they're chemically disinfected again using that same sort of solution, dried, wrapped, and autoclaved. The wrapped instruments are then stored. Before the next use, they'll be autoclaved again, unwrapped and put in the desired order on the trays. In some cases, the trays are then wrapped and autoclaved again before being taken into the operating room.
 
it dont keep me up at night cause I dont use it . I just dont think its a good idea to be posting about cleaning knife blades with bleach.I hate to see someone ruin knives cause they seen they could do it on a forum. just a tiny bit left on a blade could ruin a mirror finish. Also I would like to see you show me some data on how you can soak metal in bleach . I dont think its possible. I will have to do some reserch into this.
 
Deodorising Agents, Disinfectants and Sanitisers

The large selection of brands and combinations of chemicals available for deodorising, disinfecting and sanitising is staggering. The veterinary practinioner must select one or more agents for use in his hospital after weighing all the benifits claimed by each product. Often this choice is made without adequate consideration of the effects these agents may produce on equipment and furrnishings.

IMPORTANT: Before selecting a chemical to employ in your hospital review label statements regarding the use with metals (stainless steel in particular).

Avoid prolonged contact of cholorides (chlorine bleach), bromides, iodides and thiocyanates with stainless steel as these chemicals will contribute towards potting, corrosion and metal discolouration. Allowing salty solutions to evaporate and dry on stainless steel may also contribute to corrosive conditions.
 
Prolonged contact, as in overnight....

goto your Center for Disease Control Site and type in Bleach, plenty of articles there.

yes bleach is corrosive but in a 1/10 soloution or 1/100 soloution will not damage your knife for the 10-20 minute soak that is required to kill all bloodbourn pathogens. a 1/10 soloution is no more corrosive then you sweating all over your knife or taking it into the pool (pool water is usually 1 part per million chlorine)... there are numerous threads here of people swimming all day with thier knives.

Plain and simple if you don;t like bleach or are scared to use it then go buy some germicide soloution or something, I could care less..... I use spyderco knives for my work knives and they are reliable as well as easily cleaned and made to handle the abuse of chemical and blood.

Isoprophynol (sp?) Alcohol is also another chemical you can use, but that dries out some materials and can stain FRN scales worse then bleach.

Do what you want to do, I will continue to protect myself with the common household disenfectant that the medical community knows works.... as i said in the other thread if you value your knife so much then don;t use it at an accident scene or in hazardous enviroments..... lots of cheap knives out in the world.
 
Question for Gollnick and Westicle:

Maybe I missed it, but: What do you guys do to clean/sterilize your personal knives? I would assume that your professional tools would be autoclaved, which is not available to most people. This is not a "why" question that some are asking, but a "how" question, just to be clear.

I've chlorine tested my potable water here in Madison, AL with a pool testing kit (yeah, I know, not very accurate or professional, but good enough for discussion purposes), and it tests out in excess of 3 ppm, probably in excess of 4 or 5 ppm. For comparison, most pool supply companies recommend that when you shock your pool, to let the chlorine level go below 3 ppm before you let anyone swim in it. In other words, you're not supposed to swim in water that the Water Dept. says is OK to drink!

Long story short: for most of us using municiple water supplies, I would guess that a good rinsing with hot water and a mild detergent would be good enough. This assumes that the knife is not grossly contaminated with blood. Its what I do when I clean my kitchen knives.

However, what about my hunting knives that just got done dressing out a deer that may be infected with..... who knows?

BTW: Alabama law specifies that resturant dining utensils go through the dishwasher twice vs. only once for the dishes. FYI.

Please advise.

Thanks,

Albin
 
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