A spoon out of my drawer is relatively safe to put in my mouth. How long would it take for that same spoon to be safe if I plucked it from, say, a cow pie? Would it ever be safe, or would it be germy forever until cleaned?
In: Biology
It’s a really weird question without a good answer.
If we could figure out exactly what bacteria was on the spoon and how much, we could calculate how long it lives on average and probably figure out when all the bacteria would be dead. But if some of the poop was on the spoon, the bacteria could live longer. We could account for that, too.
If there were toxins in the poop itself, the spoon might never be safe unless washed. It depends on what the toxins are and if you’re exposing them to light, heat, etc.
Even accounting for those, sometimes the immune system gets tricked by dead bacteria and can mount a response. This is why surgical instruments aren’t just heated to sterilize them, they’re also intensely scrubbed. We figured out the burnt-up husks of bacteria and other things could STILL trigger immune responses and interfere with healing.
Safe’s a spectrum. With enough math we could figure out when the spoon is “probably” safe. It’s a lot faster to clean it with soap and warm water.
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