How or why are paper towels clean enough to use in hospitals? Wouldn’t they have germs/bacteria from factories, packaging, and shipping?
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They do have bacteria on them. But typical paper towels aren’t used in things like surgeries or medical procedures, where sterility and cleanliness is paramount. They’re used in more common, less risky places like restrooms and in cafeterias, where you’re already surrounded by airborne bacteria, so the additional bacteria from the paper towels aren’t really increasing the risk.
Things used in medical procedures are specifically prepped to be sterile, either from completely sealed packaging or from cleaning done prior to the procedure.
Paper is an extremely poor medium for most biological microorganisms to attempt to colonize, let alone flourish.
Before wood pulp becomes paper it’s bleached/treated, and the chemicals used aren’t exactly friendly to microbes (lethal to, in fact).
Next, paper is dry. Really dry. Moisture is necessary for all bacteria to live more than a few days. Even if harmful bacteria were somehow deposited on them, it would be long dead before anyone ever got it. Bacteria also require something to eat (so to speak), and potential energy sources are scarce in/on paper. These also apply to shipping, though the major (essentially insurmountable) obstacle to any contamination there is the multiple physical barriers of packaging. Just like your skin is for your body, just much less friendly to germ survivability.
So… hostile chemical environment plus no moisture or food. Ouch.
While is in theory possible for viruses to survive (deposited in/on paper later in the process), there’s two more major obstacles to contamination that could lead to any illness:
1 – In order for someone to acquire a viral infection, a minimum quantity of viral particles must make it *inside* of a host organism’s body (not nearly as easy as it sounds – paper isn’t a coughing, sneezing microbial zoo). It is extremely unlikely such a quantity (deposited at random on a certain area of a sheet/multiple sheets) would manage.
2 – Paper products used in hospitals (also in homes, though at a less stringent level of controls) are largely touched only by automated equipment in stages where contamination could occur. Wherever people are part of the process, they’re wearing protective equipment (such as a respirator) to trap any pathogens they may carry and move to the product.
TL;DR?
Paper products are very safe, anywhere they’re used. Including hospitals.
EDIT: Added blurb regarding shipping I missed from the question, end of 3rd paragraph.
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