I have a pair of scissors that’s been in a mostly unopened cabinet for 5+ years. I wanted to cut open a bag of breastmilk with clean scissors but water and soap aren’t readily accessible at the moment.
The cabinet is in a former classroom so presumably the scissors were used by kids. My husband says using the scissors wouldn’t be sanitary. I believe him, but honestly I don’t understand why with time and no food the bacteria wouldn’t just die.
EDIT: I should have used the term sanitary not sterile. My baby is old enough that we don’t sanitize pump and bottle parts daily, just wash and dry after uses.
In: 1190
Well, it depends on the pathogen in question.
Most viral particles quickly become non-viable on a dry non-porous surface with no host.
A lot of pathogenic bacteria will, too.
But some can survive in the environment without a host, or can ensporulate (basically dry up and form an impermeable coating that preserves dormant genes and cell machinery).
* One particularly nasty example of spore-forming bacteria would be [C. botulinum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum), the bacterium responsible for botulism.
* Botulinum toxin is ounce-for-ounce one of the deadliest biological agents we know of.
* C. botulinum is a common soil bacterium that gets on random surfaces all the time. It *typically* only produces toxin when it’s active and reproducing/living in an anaerobic environment (like a jar of honey, or a jar of green beans that didn’t get hot enough to kill the spores during canning and doesn’t have enough salt or acid to inhibit bacterial reproduction).
* Another spore-former would be the dreaded [C. difficile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridioides_difficile), which can cause some very nasty diahhreal illness, especially in guts that lack well-developed flora of their own – like a young infant’s – or where broad-spectrum antibiotics have weakened the existing gut biome.
Diahrreal illness is a leading cause of infant mortality. It’s worse in countries with poorly-developed sanitation (where contaminated water might be used for formula) and poor access to healthcare, but industrial countries aren’t immune. It’s probably best not to risk contaminating breast milk by opening them with an unwashed implement.
The point is, you’re not going to sterilize it in soap and water, either, but your odds of NOT introducing a pathogen to your baby’s relatively naive system are much better if you give soap and water a shot at dissolving debris and washing those spores down the drain before you use the scissors on the bag.
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