Thread: wife: used razors bring infection

Originally Posted by slt5103

Also, there is such a thing as Barber-cide. You can also just soak them in rubbing alcohol or hydrogen-perioxide (or both) and they'll be sterile enough to perform surgery with. I wouldn't recommend the performing surgery, but shaving with them is a good idea :-)!

Not sterile enough for surgery. I was a certified central service tech for quite a few years. We would either use an ethylene oxide gas or autoclave to sterilize surgical instruments. These are two of the ways you can guarantee killing all pathological microorganisms. Spores are the hardest to kill. All surgical instruments are completely, I do mean completely, cleaned before any sterilization can be done. Some of them do get quite messy.

Has anyone taken the scales off then had the blade autoclaved to sterilize it?

Originally Posted by Boker

Not sterile enough for surgery. I was a certified central service tech for quite a few years. We would either use an ethylene oxide gas or autoclave to sterilize surgical instruments. These are two of the ways you can guarantee killing all pathological microorganisms. Spores are the hardest to kill. All surgical instruments are completely, I do mean completely, cleaned before any sterilization can be done. Some of them do get quite messy.

Has anyone taken the scales off then had the blade autoclaved to sterilize it?

Never did.

For the sake of the argument: if you cut yourself completely open, and then forcefully shove the scales inside the wound, then you might indeed get infected, assuming that any dangerous pathogens survived years or decades in an environment that is as bad as it get for microbiological agents.

Spores don't die, but they was off. Now, of course, suppose your scales were tainted with anthrax spores, and you cut yourself, and forcefully insert the scales under your skin. Then it could get tricky.