Suppose you use your favorite bar of soap to scrub off the dirtiest thing imaginable. Think blooody diarrheeia foeces so foul, it refuses to be spelled right. Think nasty stomach flu and a Vietnamese latrine in 110 degree heat.
When you’re done, at what point is the same bar of soap deemed clean enough to wash your face with?
The question in my mind has to do with “reflexive” cleaning. Can the bar of soap be used to clean itself, as it were. If another bar of soap is used for the cleaning one runs afoul of the cat-in-the-hat matrix and might potentially dirty the entire planet.
Short answer, I try not to clean really foul nasty stuff with the bathroom soap bar and I don’t wash my face with the bar from the shower.
Take off and nuke the soap from orbit - it’t the only way to be sure.
(OK, actually, 4, with rubber gloves. But if it was less than a full bar and/or it was just ordinary cheap soap, I’d just ditch it and start a fresh bar)
I’d say the 2nd choice, although technically you’re not supposed to rub the soap bar directly on your ass. You’re supposed to use it to soap up a washcloth and use that.
Soap only loosens oil and dirt so they can be rinsed off. It does not kill bacteria. The bar of soap will sit there and multiply bacteria by the millions until it’s disinfected. I suppose there are several efficient ways to disinfect it, like pouring bleach over it, but I’d probably just ditch it and get another bar from my drawer. Working in a dermatologist’s office, I have enough free soap at any given time to last for months.
Lather up your hands, and use your soapy hands (or, preferably, a sponge) to cleanse the “blooody diarrheeia foeces” of which you speak. Rinse. Repeat.
This way, the bar of soap never makes direct contact with the poop. The middle man of this technique gets frequent cleansings before each confrontation with the poopy surface and a thorough rinsing afterward. This will minimize the contamination of the soap.
I swear I just don’t get the people who are so squeamish about dirt and germs. Just what do you think is going to happen if a microscopic bit of feces gets on your face? Bubonic plague? Ebola? And don’t you think you have microscopic bits of feces all over your body all the time? You have an immune system for a reason, people.
At the risk of getting too personal, I’m having a hard time imagining how you take a shower. You don’t wash your face when you take a shower? Or you have two bars of soap?
As far as the OP is concerned, although I’ve never had to clean up anything that gross, I really doubt that there are many more germs remaining on the bar of soap after #1 than there are after any of the others, and I think from any practical point of view, #2-3 are identical, except that the later ones waste more soap. I would probably use #2, and wouldn’t have the slightest qualms about it.
Throwing away a whole bar of soap after using it this way would just be silly. IMHO.
I’m with commasense on this one. I can see why you get a little ooged out but frankly, cleansing the bar of soap should suffice. I guess I would also be more squeamish if it were someone elses “blooody diarrheeia foeces” but nonetheless, an ample cleaning of the soap should still be sufficient to continue to use the bar.
Yeah, except that I personally called no less than five people today to let them know that the “rash” or the “acne” they came in to see the doctor for were staph infections, including two MRSA infections. I’m easily squicked, I guess, but I’ll throw the poopy soap away.
It’s community- or hospital-acquired, but there’s still lots of stuff in poop that’s just as bad.
Sometimes I do wonder WTF, why am I so squicked out by poor hygiene (and using poopy soap on your face is poor hygiene) and I think “dude, it’s only germs, you have an immune system, shut up!” but then the next day I go into work and look at the labs for the whole office, as is currently one of my side jobs, and I see how many people have how many different bacteria, viruses, molds, yeasts, and fungi, and I want to seal myself into a bubble. Poop especially squicks me out since I started this job.