When bacteria die from boiled water, etc, where do their corpses go??
In: Biology
There’s a few things you’re trying to do in relation to bacteria when boiling water.
First, you’re killing live bacteria, because dead bacteria will not be able to reproduce and infect. Their tiny dead bacteria bits might seem gross, but they’re not dangerous – and by the time they’ve boiled for a while, there isn’t going to be much recognizable left, and lots of the chemicals their body was made of will be broken down – water and bits of protein and what not. Usually it doesn’t take long to kill bacteria at high temperature.
Moving on, you have to boil water for a while to kill bacterial spores. Killing the bacteria that create botulism toxin is pretty easy, but killing their spores – which act as little bacteria eggs sort of – can require a long time at high temperature. This is why you have to be very careful when preparing food to last a long time, as spores can become bacteria, and then fill that food up with live bacteria (and potentially their poisonous byproducts).
Finally, you’re trying to destroy certain poisons that the bacteria might have produced. Even dead bacteria can be a threat if those bacteria already made a bunch of poison. Many, but not all, of these poisons can also be de-poisonized by heating them for long enough – for example, the botulism toxin itself can be neutralized if you get food up to around the boiling point for a few minutes.
Latest Answers