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
There are two things on your cowpie spoon that could cause you harm. The microorganisms and the toxins those microorganisms excrete.
The toxins are just chemicals and won’t go away or die unless they’re washed. Some chemicals aren’t very stable and might break down from exposure to oxygen or ultraviolet light. Some not.
The microorganisms themselves may die (in which they’d be safe for you to eat), or they may dry out and go into a sort of suspended animation until they get into the right sort of environment (like your mouth), in which case, not so much.
It would depend on what you did with that spoon while you were waiting to use it. Carefully wrapped in plastic and kept in a freezer? Open to the air and sunlight in the desert? It all depends.
I’m hoping this is a theoretical question and you’re not staring at a cowpie spoon, waiting for it to be safe to use 😉
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