I hate to heap more doubt on an already crazy world, but paper towels say things like “strong” and “absorbent” and “more sheets”, but they don’t say anything about being clean or sterile. Yet we use them that way.
Anything that has less shit on it than my hands do is good enough for me.
They aren’t sterile, and I’ve never actually run into anyone that seemed to think they are.
What they are is clean enough
The paper is rolled up, relatively dry, usually wrapped in a barrier, and isn’t a food product that will draw unusual amounts of pathogen carrying critters. So you end up with something that is cleaner than the things you use it on, akin to rag you pull out of a drawer that you washed weeks ago. Or a dish that’s been sitting in your cabinet for similar periods.When it comes down to what they’re used for commonly, that’s clean enough. It won’t be bringing pathogens into contact with anything you’ll take inside your body. That’s all that matters.
Mind you, it assumes you’re storing them in a way that keeps junk off of them. But as long as that assumption holds, you can use them as napkins (which are no more sterile), use them to mop up spills (likely cleaner than av actual mop), as a crumb barrier and wrapper for a sandwich, whatever.
There’s really nothing you would be likely to use them for that would be problematic, particularly in an emergency. Better than toilet paper in that regard, as tp is treated to break down easily in water (and the chemicals used to do that stink btw). If you need a wad of something to cram down on a wound to control bleeding, as an example, paper towels would be better than a random shirt you pulled off your body, as it’s going to have lower concentrations of things like staph, yeast, and strep, as well as the numerous other critters that populate our hides even fresh out of a shower.
I dont personally use paper towels for anything I require to be sterile
If I was washing my hands I’d expect the soap to do the anti microbial work, and rinsing with tap water to remove the microbe corpses, the paper towel is just to absorb the leftover tap water
Same deal if I use a paper towel to swab a pan while cooking, I don’t expect the paper towel to be sterile, I just get the gunk out and then heat the pan to a safe temperature
I think your use cases are the standard use (dry surface and scoop up gunk before sanitizing).
However, the first use case presents a problem: if you sanitize your hands/surface and then dry with a non-sterile paper towel, what’s to say you haven’t just smeared contaminants all over the surface again?
I do remember a study in bathrooms a few years back that found that the materials and composition of a paper towel tend to trap contaminants instead of spreading them (just like wood/paper cutting boards)… so paper towel likely has some built-in antimicrobial properties, but that window between manufacture and use is pretty wide open. We entrust a LOT to a bit of shrinkwrap.
We almost never actually need to sanitize anything you come into regular contact with. (Unless you work in a medical field, I guess…)
And if you’re freaking out about microbes and fecal matter, don’t ask what you’re breathing in with every breath you take.
Funny thing about the medical field and sanitizing… I had a relative in biochemistry. Their sanitizing regime was very specific. And when asked about hospital sanitizing practices, they could run off a long list of biological hazards common to a hospital setting that not only would not be destroyed by their practices, but were likely to mutate in novel ways.
And yet, other than C.Dif, most people survive visits to the hospital just fine.
So yeah, just the paper towel’s built-in antimicrobial properties are likely enough in most settings where a person would use them… assuming people aren’t using them to pat down a raw chicken and then wipe the counter.
I mean, part of it is how clean are you trying to keep your hands, and for how long? Short of a surgical environment, sterility for more than a few moments isn’t realistic. The goal is just to keep your hands cleaner than “just took a shit and used my hands to handle toilet paper” for a while. Paper towels are good enough to achieve that.
Wise words internet stranger!
I’m going to look back fondly on this conversation in 9 years, 1 month, and 22 days when a Bacillius Cereus outbreak spreads across 30 states and is found to be originating from contaminated paper towels
Clearly the only way to be sure is to wrap each sheet in plastic.
/fucking sarcasm
I can’t even with some people.
They’re pretty clean so long as it’s indoors and ideally not in a bathroom. There’s a massive difference of a new paper towel and a reused towel. I wear contacts and it doesn’t take much to notice residue on my hands/eyelid area.
Think about how long that paper has been sealed up in the plastic wrap. Germs and bacteria can survive for a limited amount of time. I submit anything on the paper towel is dead.
Well actually yes and no. Cheaper products are not the way to go when it comes to general health. Toilet paper ruins many things on your skin due to abrasive toxic chemicals.
That’s why I choose Clorox Scentiva Disinfectant Wipes, only $5.97 on Amazon
Because they’re white. White = clean is decades worth of marketing into every aspect of our day to say life. You see white cloth, white paper, white paint and you automatically think “clean”.
The paper rolls themselves are variably clean or sterile because each company has its own level of ethics enforcement.
How it’s Made show had an episode on them, if I’m remembering properly, and their production involves washing and cooking them at high temperature, so there is that initial sense of sterilization for the most part. However, what happens after can add a lot of bad stuff. From how often they maintain their equipment, whether the packaging itself is clean, delivery and storage until sale, there are a lot of chances something nasty can hitch a ride along the way. More so if the paper is scented and attracts rodents thinking they’re getting a nice meal.
And that’s just the kitchen paper. There’s also recycled paper which tends to use all kinds of nasty shit from wherever and the recycling process simply can’t completely sanitize.
Anyway, paper towels have the perception of seeming clean because they look clean, but they usually aren’t.
People were licking door handles during covid lockdowns, and encouraging their kids in school to cough outside of their masks during classes, and you think anyone has any kind of understanding of the concept of sterility?
Also, things rarely need to be actually sterile in your daily life, they just need to not be contaminated. And if you need to put a paper towel on a cut for example, you can just put disinfectant on it first and that probably would be enough.
