Groceries and Delivered Goods Decontamination Station Instructions
colorado.edu
colorado.edu
The visuals:
https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/jour...
The study (published March 17):
More serious answer, I wouldn't tempt any of these figures by trying to cut them short. I've yet to see any research on minimum for infection related to SARS-CoV-2 (such that you can run that against the declines on surfaces like eg plastic, instead of waiting the full 72 hours).
The dashed lines in that visual indicate the limits of detection for the surfaces. There is still some virus likely to be remaining beyond these detection limit times, however it wouldn't be believed to pose a risk of infection at those levels. For example some trace amount of the virus is likely to remain on plastic up to 80+ hours. And absolutely none is expected to still be on copper after 20 hours.
As a relatively young and healthy individual, I'm already not worried about avoiding the virus for my own wellbeing. If I get it, I will probably show mild symptoms and make a full recovery in a few weeks without needing any medical care. I'm not afraid of getting it, but I do want to take reasonable precautions to avoid spreading it to those at much greater risk.
Most of the public, myself included, are not going to build decontamination stations in their houses. Frankly, that's too much effort for too little personal benefit. If we understand how the virus spreads and use that knowledge to encourage more efficient precautions, then we'll ultimately do a lot more good.
That's why it's important for us to paint an accurate picture of how effectively it spreads on inanimate objects. If the message is just "better safe than sorry", most people will eventually decide to take their chances.
You then put the lettuce in a spinner to get most of it off. Then you wait a while for most of the rest to evaporate.
We have clean water so I expect we can use clean water to rinse the bleach off.
You could maybe transfer it to a metal container first?
Salad not so much.
I've been using it to disinfect supplies I bring home and don't want to quarantine for a day before bringing inside, as well as washing my hands.
Is there a reason it's not mentioned? Am I misinformed on its effectiveness as a disinfectant vs. viruses?
It's always been my goto for disinfecting surfaces... it's nice in that it decays into harmless water, and it's not really an issue if you get small quantities of 3% in your mouth, even if swallowed.
From TFA: "Unfortunately, bleach solutions need to be made fresh every day"
From CDC[0]: "If chlorine solution is not prepared fresh daily, it can be stored at room temperature for up to 30 days in a capped, opaque plastic bottle with a 50% reduction in chlorine concentration after 30 days of storage (e.g., 1000 ppm chlorine [approximately a 1:50 dilution] at day 0 decreases to 500 ppm chlorine by day 30)."
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/guidelines/disinfection...
It may well be that there is a first order effect as well, and the 30 day half-life is a conservative estimate when diluted with worst-case impurities in tap water.
A few things here are worth noting. Highly pure bleach is more stable. And chlorate is undesirable and mildly toxic. You don’t want too much in your drinking water.
From experience, one should only buy bleach from stores with decent turnover. Bleach from the corner store may well be dead.
We're using liquid pool chlorine diluted with water -- pool chlorine is just higher-concentration bleach.
Although not scientific by any stretch, I know that the general guidance (and my experience from chlorinating & testing pools) is that you want to check the dates on the chlorine when purchasing because the strength can be substantially lower than stated if it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time. My understanding is that the effect is worse if the product has been sitting outside in direct sunlight / high heat (ie outdoors at a home improvement store), which I believe causes concentration to drop faster.
If you're having trouble finding bleach though, likely can get some at a pool store or a big-box home improvement store in the pool chemicals area. We just mix it down to suitably diluted concentrations in a spray bottle -- readily available & much cheaper than off-the-shelf spray products. I wasn't aware it might be 50% lower concentration in 30-days though, will have to re-mix ours here soon. But that's still small potatoes overall, a gallon of bleach goes a long way and has lots of uses. :)
(I ask because I worked a polling precinct on Tuesday and 99% isopropyl was how I disinfected the smartcards that unlocked the BMDs for voters and then got passed back to us; it definitely did not evaporate instantly on those cards).
I'd be interested in knowing whether anyone with expertise on this subject has thoughts on it. The boy is a biochem junior (and in my living room, because of coronavirus) and he doesn't have a firm answer on whether it would or wouldn't work.
They will be delivering for hundreds of people and may well be infected. Do you need to hide behind the door and ask them to leave it there and hand them a tip somehow. Because holding a 6 feet distance while they hand you your grocery/food is not gonna work.
I asked the same from the delivery guy Yesterday, he threw everything he had and run away like I had the plague :D. So be careful.
You can't fully reduce the risk from aerosol, as who says that in an apartment building someone didn't pass by 5 minutes before and went all disciple of Nurgle by coughing their lungs out, but that is that.
It seems like a good idea to reheat food to 165F (74C) which is likely sufficient to deactivate the virus.
Why is washing your hands appropriate but not washing the contaminated items you'll touch with your washed hands afterwards?
Your comment strikes me as stupid.
Sadly, it's not entirely clear that washing hands makes a difference either. It might, but it also might not. Michael Ostermholm, director of CIDRAP, explained, 'One of the things, people want to do something. They want to feel like they’re doing something, and so we tell them, “Wash your hands often to prevent this disease.”' [0]
There has been one study showing that SARS-CoV-2 can remain viable, albeit exponentially degraded, for 72 hours on certain hard plastics or metals, in ideal conditions in a laboratory. [1] So there's that.
We don't know whether fomite transmission is possible yet. It's probably not the best idea to spend a lot of time or mental anguish scrubbing and sanitizing everything, but obviously simple easy steps like washing hands with non-antibacterial soap can't hurt.
0: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/joe-rogan-michael-oster...
1: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973?query=fea...
It's just not 100% clear whether this form of transmission is actually possible.
The surprising part to me is that Osterholm was so candid on the topic.
For glass, metal, and plastic, as well as vegetables, soap should be fairly effective.