Thread: Anthrax from Shaving Brushes: 1925 Article

This is one reason that bone meal for agriculture must be
autoclaved and cannot be made from 'found' bones.

It is just common enough in cattle country that it gets
diagnosed and treated correctly more often than not...

Originally Posted by LinacMan

When I was in veterinary private practice we used ethylene oxide to sterilize items that can't be steam sterilized. Might ask your vet if they'd be willing to sterilize it for you. Multiple items can be individually package and sterilized simultaneously. Just a thought...

Thank you for a great suggestion! I will check with our vet and see if they would be willing to gas sterilize my brush. If so, I will post pictures-it is a really nice brush with a long wooden handle.

Nowadays cutaneous anthrax is easy to treat with antibiotics. Even in the old days it was rarely fatal.

The issue isn't horsehair, it's animals with anthrax. Cattle also get anthrax from pasturing. So a strop could throw off spores and give you inhaled anthrax, which requires near immediate antibiotic therapy. There was a recent outbreak in Vermont(?), where old drums were played in a concert and a member of the audience developed anthrax.

Anthrax in the modern world is rare, and is a veterinary reportable disease. There are typically few dozen or so cases reported each year. It would be an extreme rarity for anthrax contamination to be present in a modern-made brush. I don't if ANY such cases have occurred post-WWII.

In vintage brushes, the fact that the brush has been in use and passed on ensures its safety. Anthrax-implicated brushes would be removed from circulation.

The biggest risk with straight razors and used brushes is human papilloma virus (HPV, which is associated with warts). This virus is hardy and survives long periods of a dry environment. It also causes an inocuous enough infection to pass notice. Viruses are, however, much easier to inactivate (e.g., near boiling water immersion) than spores, such as from B. anthracis.

Straight razors are a hazard in a barber shop if used sequentially on customers for several reasons: 1) promiscuity; 2) short rest between customers; 3) wet environment. This is why straight razor shaves are outlawed in many States and require disposable blades in others. Hepatitis C is a key risk here.

Vintage straight razors are a non-issue generally. Time, a dry environment and the mechanical cleaning from honing and stropping removes risk. If you're worried, dip the blade in tap hot water to warm and then boiling water to pasteurize and then wipe clean. The wiping and stropping will remove spores, and the heat treatment will kill viruses and vegetative cells.

Alcohol is not sporicidal.

If you want to use bleach, which is a generally effective chemical against all pathogens, you need to modify it so it is not corrosive to the steel of the blade. Here is how to prepare a solution:

1. Put 1 quart (1 L) tap or distilled water into a container.
2. Add 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) 6% chlorine bleach.
3. Mix.
4. Add 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 mL) 5% white vinegar.
5. Mix.
6. Soak open razor in solution at room temperature for 2 minutes.
7. Remove razor, rinse thoroughly with tap water and dry.

If you do this properly, there should be no corrosion except possibly at the very edge, which can be corrected by stropping or light honing.

In your opinion, which appears to be expert, if you do the boiling water treatment is there any need to use the bleach mixture?

I'm make no claim to be an expert on anthrax, but as a veterinarian of 26 years, I know a little more about it than the average person.

Originally Posted by Alethephant

The issue isn't horsehair, it's animals with anthrax. Cattle also get anthrax from pasturing. So a strop could throw off spores and give you inhaled anthrax, which requires near immediate antibiotic therapy. There was a recent outbreak in Vermont(?), where old drums were played in a concert and a member of the audience developed anthrax.

As I understand it, the OP is concerned about the risk/likelihood of his NOS horsehair brush being contaminated with anthrax. Maybe I misunderstood your point, but I'm unclear why you say the issue isn't horsehair but the animal with anthrax. One of the old names for anthrax infection is Wool Sorter's disease. As the name implies, the workers sorting the wool in a factory would become infected while handling the wool. The sheep were not in the factory, just their contaminated wool.

Originally Posted by Alethephant

Anthrax in the modern world is rare, and is a veterinary reportable disease. There are typically few dozen or so cases reported each year. It would be an extreme rarity for anthrax contamination to be present in a modern-made brush. I don't if ANY such cases have occurred post-WWII.

Agreed, but look at the OP's second post:

Originally Posted by Croaker

I just bought a nice vintage horsehair (NOS) brush with a long wooden handle...

Originally Posted by Alethephant

In vintage brushes, the fact that the brush has been in use and passed on ensures its safety.

The fact that it's NOS means it hasn't been used and therefore (barring the box or handle indicating that it's been sterilized) potentially (albeit unlikely) contaminated. What is the source of this horse hair? Is it from a country where anthrax is endemic?

According to: CBRNE - Anthrax Infection: eMedicine Emergency Medicine

"The last fatal case during this period occurred in 1976, when a home craftsman died of inhalational anthrax after working with yarn imported from Pakistan."

I'm not advocating mass hysteria over vintage brushes and totally agree that the risk is incredibly small. I see no harm in sterilizing the brush, even if the only reason is to provide peace of mind.

Just my 2 cents.

Originally Posted by LinacMan

I'm make no claim to be an expert on anthrax, but as a veterinarian of 26 years, I know a little more about it than the average person.



As I understand it, the OP is concerned about the risk/likelihood of his NOS horsehair brush being contaminated with anthrax. Maybe I misunderstood your point, but I'm unclear why you say the issue isn't horsehair but the animal with anthrax. One of the old names for anthrax infection is Wool Sorter's disease. As the name implies, the workers sorting the wool in a factory would become infected while handling the wool. The sheep were not in the factory, just their contaminated wool.




Agreed, but look at the OP's second post:





The fact that it's NOS means it hasn't been used and therefore (barring the box or handle indicating that it's been sterilized) potentially (albeit unlikely) contaminated. What is the source of this horse hair? Is it from a country where anthrax is endemic?

According to: CBRNE - Anthrax Infection: eMedicine Emergency Medicine

"The last fatal case during this period occurred in 1976, when a home craftsman died of inhalational anthrax after working with yarn imported from Pakistan."

I'm not advocating mass hysteria over vintage brushes and totally agree that the risk is incredibly small. I see no harm in sterilizing the brush, even if the only reason is to provide peace of mind.

Just my 2 cents.

This is a really neat post. Antharx can be cured easily by a number of modern antibiotics including the quinolones, macrolides, tetrocyclines and even plain old penicillins. Skin infections are not worrisome and are quite common to primary care physicians in rural areas. It's inhalation or pneumoanthrax that is so deadly and gives the CDC nightmares. The good and bad news on that is that few docs look for pneumoanthrax (mediastinal widening on chest x-ray) and with immediate treatment is only 75% fatal versus 97% fatal without treatment (note they are still looking for that 3%). SO if you happen to get pneumoanthrax from a brush, you have little to worry about .
Now to really kill most spores you have two choices, bleach, or autoclaves. Since most folks don't have a household autoclave and probably woudl destroy the brush by autoclaving, they should probably try the bleach. Alcohol won't penetrate the spores and hence won't kill them.

Unfortunately, I am not a doc/vet/nurse/ or medical expert. I just worked with the bug in grad school. You jsut learn a lot in the process.

Boiling water will deal with viruses, vegetative (growing) bacteria, parasites and fungi. However bacterial spores from Bacillus (e.g., anthrax) or Clostridium (e.g., tetanus) are hardier, and require a stronger heat treatment than boiling water for a minute or two.

For example, routine sterilization requires pressure cooking at 121 C (15 psi at sea level) for 15 minutes, or dry heat of 150 C for 60 minutes. Both of these would likely destroy the razor.

Hypochlorous acid (from bleach) is effective against spores with a short contact time. So is chlorine dioxide gas (which they used in the post office and Senate anthrax attacks). Thus my recipe for neutral bleach. The addition of vinegar shifts the pH from 13 or so, where steel is rapidly corroded, to 7 or so, where steel is more resistant and hypochlorous acid concentration is high. A few ppm of hypochlorous acid is sufficient to kill B. anthracis spores with a couple minutes of contact time.

You can also soak the brush bristles in the neutral bleach solution. I would do this several times with new solution, as the hypochorous acid would be used up initially by contact with organic matter. Also, unfortunately, bleach is good at dissolving hair, so there would be a race between sterilization and destruction.

Again, I wouldn't worry about spores on a razor, as honing, stropping and wiping would remove them. Boiling water is sufficient for everything else. If you're really paranoid, dip the razor in 95% isopropanol and light it ("flaming"). Wait until the flame goes out. Watch out for the scales, though, as celluloid = nitrocellulose, which is highly flammable.

When is the last time you heard of someone getting tetanus from shaving with a razor and brush? Clostridium tetani is ubiquitous in the environment (it's in dust, e.g.), so it is enormously more prevalent than B. anthracis. Your chances of being hit by lightning while shaving are probably much more likely, particularly if you do it outside!

Horsehair brushes now come primarily from Pakistan, where anthrax is more endemic than other places in the world. So there is a theoretical risk.

However, muslims use horsehair brushes, as boar bristles are unclean, and I don't know of any anthrax-related cases in the last 20 years from such usage by hundreds of millions of people.

If you have a NOS vintage brush, and want to disinfect it, you can use a type of Tyndallization:

1. Boil some water and soak the bristles in it for 5 minuts.

2. Soak the brush in warm growth medium, such as nutrient broth used in microbiology, or some beef broth you make by boiling scraps of beef in water without salt. Let the soak continue (ideally at 100 F) for several days.

3. Boil some water, and insert the bristles for 5 minutes.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 several times (3?).

What happens is that any spores present will grow out in the broth. Then you kill them in the boiling water. Then you grow out some more. Then you kill them. Etc.

This avoids the extreme, destructive temperatures needed in a single treatment.

THIS INFORMATION IS PROVIDED FOR THEORETICAL DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY! DO NOT CARRY OUT THIS PROCEDURE AT HOME! IF YOU REALLY DO HAVE ANTHRAX SPORES PRESENT, YOU WILL BE GROWING OUT LARGE NUMBERS IN THE NUTRIENT BROTH AND BE IN MUCH MORE DANGER THAN HANDLING THE ORIGINAL BRUSH WOULD PUT YOU IN. YOU MIGHT ALSO BE IN VIOLATION OF THE PATRIOT ACT. HANDLING & DISPOSAL OF GROWTH MEDIA IS A CRITICAL ISSUE IN MICROBIOLOGY.

Originally Posted by Alethephant

If you have a NOS vintage brush, and want to disinfect it, you can use a type of Tyndallization:
.....snip....

Tyndallization -- learned something today.
Thanks...