The $2 Standup Desk

Well actuallly I did not sand it down at all, and it is perfectly fine, but I guess that depends a lot on the quality of the pallets you can find. It can't hurt to sand it down some anyway...

You're better off getting some rather new ones anyway. Shipping pallets are rarely loaded with dirty things though... and more often than not the load is completely enclosed in cling wrap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallet#Food_safety_risks

    Food safety risks

    Wood pallets used to transport food can possibly harbor pathogens such as
    E. coli and Listeria.

    A release by the National Consumers League announced the testing of 70 wood
    pallets and 70 plastic pallets that have been loaded with perishable products
    and shipped to an end user was shipped overnight to an independent microbiology
    lab for testing. The results came back with 10 percent of the wood pallets
    positive for E. coli and 1.4 percent positive on the plastic pallets.[29]

Contaminated pallets is enough of a thing that you should at least think twice about bringing one into your home, especially if you have ankle biters around or eat lunch at your desk.

If you search for salmonella pallet you get a lot of link bait, and some indication of a PR war between the wooden pallet industry and the plastic pallet industry, and a very small number of level headed, topical articles.

The idea is enough of a thing that the wooden pallet industry has responded at length: http://www.palletenterprise.com/articledatabase/view.asp?art...

Part of their defense is "anyway, it's tertiary packaging, so why worry?" That's fine if you're worried about individual resale items in their own packages, in a wholesale box of packages, wrapped on a pallet. Maybe not so slam dunk safe if you're bringing the pallet itself into your home.