Hey, Medics?
Ever since I got my first contact lenses (decades ago, in junior high school) I rinsed them first, then added a drop of lens solution, then stuck them in my eyes. That’s what the optician taught me to do. A few years back, my optometrist (a completely different guy in a different city and county) noticed me going through my routine while putting in a sample lens. “Good heavens, don’t do that!” he said and, when I asked why he said, “Because the water might contaminate your lenses – and then your eyes.”
But, since I had been doing the same thing for over thirty years, I ignored him and continued rinsing my lenses before inserting them.
Ever since I started learning to cook (decades ago, around the time I started junior high school) I learned to pull chicken breasts out of the package, rinse them off, and then start pulling the skin and bones away from the meat. It was just part of the preparation my mother taught, and she ran a fried chicken restaurant for years (until Colonel Sanders moved in across the street). Not too long ago I clicked on one of those click-bait links below our discussions and was taken to a site that warned STOP DOING THIS TO YOUR CHICKEN!!! and discovered that, while Julia Child and other celebrity chefs of olden days very specifically and routinely told viewers to wash chicken as part of the preparatory exercise, modern culinary experts advise against the practice. Why? Because there’s a good chance that, even though the flash-freezing process used in packaging chicken parts might kill off any bacteria in the bird, there’s a good chance that the water coming out of the kitchen sink may contain salmonella and/or botulism and/or something worse. Thus, even though you’re cooking the meat, there’s no sense introducing potential problems from molds, bacteria, and/or their waste products into your meal.
Well, okay, that got my attention. In fact, the specifics and detail of that article helped make the argument quite convincing. So I no longer wash the chicken when I prepare it. Furthermore, I no longer rinse my contact lenses before inserting them, now that I know specifically what could be lurking in my tap water even though I might think I’m making something clean.
Which brings me to the question:
Ever since I took my first Basic First Aid course (decades ago in [del] junior [/del] high school) I’ve learned to treat mild burns, abrasions, and lacerations by washing the wound first, then applying whatever bandages (and possibly topical medicines) are necessary. Is it no longer advisable to wash off a wound? Was it never really safe, or have we just been building up higher concentrations of germs in our water supplies to the point where using tap water is now too much of a hazard to be worth the risk?
—G?