I was thinking of suggesting good ol’ rubbing alcohol, as well.
The problem with rubbing alcohol and peroxide is that any disinfection or sterilization method is time and dose dependant. The dose for these are determined by what is commercaially available, as they are already pretty dilute unless you get them from a chemical supply house. If you could submerge the pot in either for a long enough period of time, it would work fine. This would be practical if we were talking about a piece of silverware, but not for a pot. These are not common methods, so I have no clue what the required time would be. H2O2 is also pretty caustic stuff, so I suspect that it would cause pitting before the sterilization time was up.
On further research, I have found references that say that you can drop the dry heat sterilization time down to 6 minutes if you have the temperature at 374F. I’d give it an extra few minutes anyway, as that time does not start until the pot itself reaches temperature.
I knew hydrogen peroxide (as sold for disinfecting cuts) was heavily diluted, but I didn’t realize rubbing alcohol was cut with water.
How about go on down to the liquor store and pick up some Everclear (90% alcohol) or even 151 rum (75.5% alcohol)? I’d expect that most all pathogenic bacteria would get killed on contact by that stuff … but I also expect someone to come in this thread and tell me that lots of the bacteria/viruses that can survive brief exposures to alcohol.
EEEwww! But funny. The OP is giving me flashbacks to the slummy apartment I lived in that also had a globe light in the bathroom and once or twice a yellow-filledness to it. Ugh.
Just give it a wash and boil water in it.
Remember- the other thing you use this pot for (assuming your not veg) is ANIMAL CORPSES. You stick dead animals in it all the time and wash off whatever remains with nothing more than dish soap. Boiling will kill everything that was living, cleaning will get any little bits off of it.
Remember all the water you drink has been pissed of out millions of people and animals before you came around. We are made of stuff that once actually was urine. Surely we can handle drinking out of a well cleaned and sanitized pot that may have held something gnarly once.
Alcohols kill Gram positive cocci pretty well, but the main pathogens you’d be worried about in this case are Gram negative rods. Isopropanol works better than ethanol. IIRC, whatever alcohol’s mode of action is, it requires a significant amount of water, so a 70% solution is commonly used for disinfection (not sterilization). Alcohols are not effective against bacterial spores, mold spores, prions, or viruses.
As I said above, all disinfectants or sterilizing agents are time and dose dependant. Alcohols evaporate quickly, so you’d have to soak whatever you were trying to sterilize in them.
QUOTE]A thorough wash with hot, soapy water will do it. Or run it through your dishwasher.
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This may clean your pot by helping wash away the oils bacteria cling to, it will not disinfect it.
It won’t clean out any bacteria hiding in the minute scratches, pit, etc.
This is the quickest and most efficient way to disinfect your pot. Chlorine bleach is the most effective disinfectant known to man, it kills all living matter on contact, which includes bacterias, viruses, spores, etc…
Commercial and industrial disinfectants, are effective but require specific wet/drying times and usually inefective against viruses.
Water at a rolling boil for 10 minutes, or at medium temperature in the oven may work but some viruses such as Hep C and HIV are extremely hardy.
There may be other ways but why take chances? Use the bleach solution or buy a new pot.
Cite?
And bleach doesn’t? I repeat…
Thanks all for the wonderful suggestions! I had no idea such a mundane topic would inspire such rich discussion.
My plan after reviewing all the advice is to fill it with hot soapy water and let it soak for awhile, scrub, rinse, boil water in it for an hour, and then bake it for an hour at 350. It is a multiple-track attack.
Okay now I’m scared. You’re telling me I might get Hep C or HIV from my cooking pot? :eek:
No worries! The hour at 350 will destroy viruses. Your plan is overkill, but if that is what you need to do to make yourself comfortable, go for it.
I see that I’m late to the party, but another option is sanitizing solutions available at your local homebrew supply shops (or on-line at places like Northern Brewer).
Most posters recommend wasting substantial energy (e.g., boiling water for 30 min) or polluting the environment with toxic chemicals (e.g., bleach, alcohol), or both, for no discernible reason.
What dangerous living organisms are you worried about? Please name a living organism that could plausibly drip from your ceiling and cause you harm if you ingested it?
The scientific answer is soap and warm water.
If your fear is cooties, try casting a spell.
This far and noone’s asked why on earth didn’t you use a pail or bucket, or even a trashcan?
Because I must admit, if yellow stuff was dripping out of the ceiling, my first instinct wouldn’t be to put a cooking pot which wasn’t already condemned under to catch the drops…
Seconded. Yes, everyone (particularly masterofnone) is right about what it takes to sterilize a given object. However, no matter how sterile that pot is, there’s no way your ingredients (or your hands, or your other utensils) will be sterile. Safe food handling practices pretty much assume that there will be some sort of bacterial contamination, but that instead of aiming for sterility, you’re just trying to minimize growth and spoilage. I.e. when you cook, get the food up to a high enough temperature to kill mostly everything, and after you’re done, don’t let it stay warm for long enough for any surviving bacteria to grow.
Also, I was under the impression that HIV and Hep C are pretty delicate. There’s a reason that these viruses can only be transmitted through bodily fluids – they can barely survive outside a host, much less through any cooking process. ETA: Cite, cite.
I’m a bit surprised that there are several mentions of bleach, but not of salt water? I’ve always heard to use boiling salt water to clean (sensitive to acid) stainless steel thermos bottles or pots when food went bad in them. Boiling salt water for 30 mins. or so would surely destroy bacteria and viruses, no?
I had a situation once where water was dripping from a leak above a ceiling (it was actually dripping off the light bulb. The liquid actually did smell quite similar to urine - I assume because it picked up all sorts of soluble stuff from the top surface of the ceiling layer, that had dropped through the cracks in the floorboards above over the years. The room above was just a bedroom, so it most probably wasn’t really urine, it just smelt that way.
Also on a different occasion, I had to deal with some waterlogged bagged glass fibre ceiling insulation - and the liquid that drained out of that was quite similar to urine, in colour and odour.
Ok, sorry, this is what we’ve been told at work. my bad.
Although, it’s widespread use in medical and dental practices, daycare and health centres, drinking water treatment , pool and sauna maintenance, food preparation, gyms, public washrooms, and many other environments it is arguably the most efficient due to cost of production and it’s effectiveness.
It is also used in septic treatment plants, which I believe, would be the worst case scenario for the OP.
Soap and water are great if we were washing our hands here but it is a pot we’re talking about.
Sodium Hypochrolite (bleach) is a salt.
depends on what you mean by delicate… from your cite:
Have none of you ever given a child a pot to throw up in? Get over it!
Thank you Obi Wan!
If you had even bothered to read the OP, it asked:
Everyone gave their advice and suggestions them you contribute this gem of knowledge?! Get over what?
Please explain the similarity between a child’s vomit and the possible urine, fecal matter, rotting organic material, etc. the OP suspects is dripping from the plumbing of an upstairs bathroom.
Answer the question posed or get over yourself.
Here’s a MeToo for soap and water. You can even pony up for some antimicrobial soap if it makes you feel better, although I’ve always questioned if there was any significant difference between traditional detergents and the “antibacterial” varieties sold.
WRT H2O2, I could have sworn I read an article somewhere that said that OTC hydrogen peroxide’s antimicrobial effects are weak at best. In treating wounds, hydrogen peroxide is more useful in that, as a sterile liquid, it cleans the wound and (according to Wikipedia, at least), reduces bleeding from smaller blood vessels.
I don’t know what they do in your family, but we’ve usually preferred a puke pail.