Puny detergents

[Steve Firth]

I'm not stopping you from archiving my posts.

What are you? Some sort of entrant in the British Dumb Bastard awards?

[manatbandq]

True, but if you have anything useful to say why not let it be archived in uk.d-i-y so that others could learn from your knowledge.

awards?

Sorry, I couldn't compete with you in that.

[Steve Firth]

I'm not stopping any user of uk.diy from archiving my posts. Are you really this dense?

You're way ahead on the present showing.

[Dave]

Have you never heard of a product called 'Screen'? It is one of the few things that can kill MRSA & AIDS. It is a virocide and a bacteriacide (sp) combined. Used as directed in any infected place and you are virtually guaranteed to be free from things that can infect you (humans aside)

Dave

[Steve Firth]

No, is it one of the "activated glutaraldehyde" products?

I can think of a few possibilities, it's activated glutaraldehyde (as above) or an peroxide or it's simply another form of bleach. Of all of them bleach works, it's cheap and it poses fewer hazards than most of them (other than peroxides) while being less prone to inactivation by biological material (unlike peroxides).

[stejonda]

In message , [e-mail] writes

Why wasn't I made aware that uk.d-i-y archives posts? Could the secretary of the managing committee please contact me immediately to discuss.

[Dave]

I had a look on the container, but it gives nothing away. However, I believe it is used instead of bleach to prevent the generation of chlorine gas when bleach is mixed with other cleaners. I would imagine that it is acidic. It does not smell anything like bleach.

Dave

[Steve Firth]

Having found it on their wep site, they don't give anythign away, fullstop

It's a general purpose cleaner with no particularly outstanding properties that I can see. It's alkaline, not acidic and the germicidal component is "quaternary ammonium compound" and a sequestrant (probably EDTA but not stated). It says that it kills HIV at a concentration of

1:10, IMO an outstandingly poor performance. HIV is hardly difficult to kill.

Oddly enough, although requiring a concentration of 1:10 to kill HIV, the recommended dilution for use is 1:50. Go figure.

Personally, I'd stick with bleach unless a fresh grapefruit smell is important to you.

[Magician]

I>>>>>t's a general purpose cleaner with no particularly outstanding properties that I can see. It's alkaline, not acidic and the germicidal

component is "quaternary ammonium compound" and a sequestrant (probably

EDTA but not stated). It says that it kills HIV at a concentration of

1:10, IMO an outstandingly poor performance. HIV is hardly difficult to

kill.

[Dave]

Where does it stand in the killing of MRSA then? When I first saw it, I thought that it was the hospital's first line of defence. Obviously, I was totally wrong.

I am not that well up in these things. Give me an aircraft to get back up in the air and I am your man. I am basically an aircraft engineer.

I wish I could :-(( Is that how you, or they interpret the smell?

I have a small job as a school caretaker (title is 'site supervisor) 4 years after I took early retirement from the aerospace industry at the age of 53, five and a half years ago.

As an aside, how come I don't feel as old as 58? Is it mental, or what?

Lots of folk in this job think that bleach is a banned substance, but it is not. It is noted for its power for jobs where there is no substitute, but is discouraged from use due to the chlorine gas factor.

Dave

[Ian Stirling]

Germs are funky stuff. Odd infections in some surgical wards were finally traced to biologicals growing inside surgical iodine containers.

[Steve Firth]

Bugger all, apparently.

How interesting.

Oh, no it wasn't.

Tell you what sunshine, if you're going to wave your willy, make sure that it isn't as small as yours.

[Steve Firth]

For MRSA, the best defence is handwashing. It's spread by contact from person to person rather than through dirt and dust. It's somethign that pissed me off in hospital, watching consultants wearing their street clothes go from bed to bed prodding patients and failing to wash between beds. They need to get it through their thick skulls that they are the ones spreading the infection.

Well germs are like tiny, tiny aircraft... no not really. I can do aircraft as well in a limited way I used to work in a building where a lot of aircraft stuff was done. Some of my software is flying around up there.

That's what they say about it, I haven't tried sniffing it.

Deferently, I'm not far off your age and the only time I feel over 23 is when some muscle or bone complains at me.

As I think I said before it's not good in the presence of organic material. But of all the available stuff it's IMO the best, everything else leads to some false sense of security because it's high tech so it has to be good.

The worst case of hospital acquired infections that occured during my time working in one was when a plague of campylobacter (projectile vomiting and diarhoea) hit the childrens ward. It only affected those on milk so the formula feed was suspect. It turned out to be a nursing assistant who, in the goodness of her heart had decided that the wash and sterilise that bottles and teats were given was inadequate so she took the bottles and teats and soaked them in a proprietary cleaner/disinfectant before rinsing the bottles and making up the feed. The disinfectant solution was home to a thriving population of campylobacter.

Anywa, my old Prof (and he was bloody old in those days) used to bang ont he table and shout that dilution is the only answer. And he was right. It's not good slopping on a bit of disinfectant and hoping, the best thing is to actually clean with changes of water and several rinses. If this is done using a good cleaner and lots of elbow grease the results are as good as or better than trying to use some high falutin disinfectant.

[Owain]

People don't understand that disinfectants aren't cleaners.

Owain

[usenet]

I learnt this somewhere/sometime too. Lots of people, don't realise that one 'big' wash is only a fraction as effective as several 'small' washes using exactly the same amount of liquid in total. At least this is true if the major effect of the wash is to dilute the dirt.

E.g. say we have 1cc of 'dirt' on an object and assume perfect mixing with the washing solution (the perfect mixing is unlikely but the relation between results will be similar if less than perfect mixing occurs at each stage).

Say we have 1000cc of washing solution to use.

A single 'wash' will dilute the 'dirt' by 1000:1

Two washes in 500cc each will dilute the dirt by 500x500:1 = 250000:1

Four washes in 250cc each will give 250^4:1 = 3906250000:1

OK, so there are limits, there must be enough of the wash to wash in so you can't keep going on like this but even two half washes is hugely more effective than one big one.

I try and remember this in particular when washing paint brushes, a series of jars with increasingly clean solvent works better and is more economical than just one.