Why do we assume paper towels are sterile, or at least clean?

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨dan1101@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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.

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fratermus@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Unless it’s been autoclaved or packaged in a “clean room” I don’t assume anything’s sterile . I would say that mass produced paper products like that are closer to sanitary.

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kensand@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
If I’m bleeding any more than a drop or two of blood, I’m reaching for the closest remotely clean and absorbent material while I go find a real bandage and some neosporin. 99% of the time that is a paper towel since they’re always around and handy. Never got an infection that way, and I think it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction when you or someone else is bleeding…

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Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Anything that has less shit on it than my hands do is good enough for me.

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Lasherz12@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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- adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    We almost never actually need to sanitize anything you come into regular contact with.
    
    And if you’re freaking out about microbes and fecal matter, don’t ask what you’re breathing in with every breath you take.
    
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  - kn33@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
do they? do they assume normal towels are sterile?

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balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Is anyone assuming they’re sterile (aseptic) tho? I would hope nobody is using paper towels for anything important in a medical context. In other cases their sterility is not important at all, interacting with microbes (includiing pathogenic ones) is a normal part of everyday life and our immune systems are pretty good at dealing with them (unless you are exposed to something particularly nasty, like during a pandemic). Unless you go full-on germaphobe, the microbial contamination that exists on new paper towels is nothing compared to other stuff you interact with (smartphone, door handles, kitchen sponge, fresh produce, etc).

Otherwise, they’re self-evidently cleaner than whatever I’m trying to clean with them, that’s why they work for cleaning in the first place. If I swipe a kitchen counter with them after cooking, it will very obviously have less gunk and shmutz now, which means it will be cleaner.

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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The industrial process of making paper is pretty sterile (Nobody checks and guarantees it, though).

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Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- darvocet@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No sir i would argue even those idiots knew in fact what they were doing was stupid. However have you taken a second to reflect on how utterly owned you are? Jesus fuck. So owned. Fucking libtard.
  
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  - Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    I’m losing IQ just by reading your comment.
    
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  - phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You seem nice
    
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DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Clearly the only way to be sure is to wrap each sheet in plastic.

/fucking sarcasm

I can’t even with some people.

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lath@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  The paper rolls themselves are variably clean or sterile
  
  No consumer-grade paper towel/kitchen roll is going to be sterile even in the wide “medical” sense, that’s basically a statistical impossibility. No factory is going to spend a shitton of extra money to have clean-room equipment and practices, and that means people will sneeze on it.
  
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  - lath@lemmy.world ⁨52⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Impossibility is incorrect. Improbability is the better word.
    
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JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Might the bleaching and reconstituting-process of paper fibres play a role? And then, common industry standards and checks?

(not saying you’re wrong)

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RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s a bad assumption to make. Many pathogenic bacteria can survive for months with no meal.
  
  It’s more that interacting with bacteria, even pathogenic bacteria, is a normal part of everyday life. That’s exactly what our immune systems are for. Unless you are sticking the paper inside you or doing surgery with it, you’ll be fine using a paper towel with some microbes on it.
  
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Up_dog@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Hahaha, I think someone didn’t get your humor
  
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