Washing a cut with water

[ShockDoctor]

When they say to wash a cut with water to clean it well, I get worried because I know that in tap water there's a lot of bacteria and other microscopic junk (that's why I never drink tap water). Is it really a good idea to wash a wound with water instead of just using an antiseptic all over it?

Did you know, tap water is usually healthier than bottled water? Your local municipality uses a variety of methods to clean it's water, including filtration, reverse osmosis, UV, and chlorine. Government establish certain regulations about what bacteria can be present in tap water and at what levels. These levels are constantly monitored. Bottle water on the other hand has very few regulations governing it.

Don't be afraid drinking tap water. It's perfectly safe. We were drinking far worse stuff for the thousands of years before filtration came about.

So tap water in fact will kill any bacteria that is suseptible to chlorine straight out of the tap.

That's a good point, although the deactivation time for most bacteria is way longer than the time the chlorine will be on your hand. Depending on the temp, E Coli usually takes one minute at 2ppm of chlorine (drinking water coming out of your tap usually has around 0.5 ppm of chlorine) to become inactive. Other bacteria, like the Hepatitis A Virus, takes around ten minutes at 2ppm of chlorine to become inactive (again, tap water usually has about 0.5 ppm of chlorine when it comes out of the tap).

Other, more chlorine resistant bacterium, like Cryptosporidium can take up to a week at 2ppm to become inactive. There have been some high profile cases of mass crypto poisoning via water supplies. But crypto is only spread via fecal to mouth contact, so it's pretty rare. Unless feces is somehow getting into your water supply, you're fine.

My point, don't rely on the brief exposure to chlorine to kill bacteria. But also, don't worry about the tap water giving you some sort of infection; it's safe.

[Bernhard]

[...] We were doing is for tens of thousands of years [...]

I hate it to say, but...the death rate and "shortness of life" rate due to infections was significantly higher the last ten thousands of years than since 1847.

I really don't like this kind of argument in (emergency) medical context. Don't take it personally.

Edited July 17, 2011 by Bernhard

[ERDoc]

I hate it to say, but...the death rate and "shortness of life" rate due to infections was significantly higher the last ten thousands of years than since 1847.

Agreed, but there is a reason for our immune systems and it obviously was good enough to get us from several thousand BC to 1847.

[Nerd_Slayer]

I hate it to say, but...the death rate and "shortness of life" rate due to infections was significantly higher the last ten thousands of years than since 1847.

Agreed. There was a time when 40 was "old". Humans naturally aren't able to live to 90. We can thank Semmelweis and modern medicine for the average life expectancy in the 70's.

And that was a good post SD. Stay away from that wacker thread and I might like you.

[Good Samaritan]

Thanks for the great feedbacks, I'm not afraid to wash my wounds or anyone else's in water anymore

[BushyFromOz]

one of my favourite stories.....

In some of the POW camps on the thai burma railway during WW2. Aussie POWS fashioned a still out of petrol cans and bamboo as piping to distill water, and with distilled water and ground rock salt were making saline to use as IV fluids for cholera patients and cleaning wounds.

Giving sets were Beer bottles with the bottom broken off, turned upside down with some sterilised cloth covering the opening. The giving set was a rubber stopper in the neck of the beer bottle, spiked with sterlised bamboo shoot and a length of stethescope tubing hooked up to a needle that was resterilised and re-sharpened for each patient

One way was using a can of saline or distilled water that was allowed to trickle over tropical ulcers as a constant irrigation which recuced the number of limb amputations.

Everything was sterlised in boiling water as it was the only thing they had, hands, eating utensils, clothes (if they had any), uncluding towels for packing during surgery. Even in POW camps with no supplies, they were stil able to come up with ingenious ways to perform complicated surgery in the middle of a jungle, and with the exception of some surgial instruments that they carried with them from Java and occasional silver spoons with the edges sharpened as scalpels, sewing needles etc adapted for the job, everything else was made with bamboo.

Useless information, but interesting... there was a refernece to water i there somewhere, im sure of it.

[Dustdevil]

Agreed. There was a time when 40 was "old". Humans naturally aren't able to live to 90. We can thank Semmelweis and modern medicine for the average life expectancy in the 70's.

I thank them for nothing. I blame them for overpopulation.

[chbare]

However, the population growth has become much slower in countries with "modern" medicine and good indicators such as lower infant mortality rates. In fact, countries such as Japan are headed toward a population growth crisis where the elderly will significantly outnumber the young with the potential for near zero growth. Yet, countries without sophisticated health care or countries with lower indicators (high infant mortality et al.) are experiencing significant population growth.

Take care,

chbare.

[Bernhard]

Agreed, but there is a reason for our immune systems and it obviously was good enough to get us from several thousand BC to 1847.

Sure, but now you have (the ability) to choose, if you're working on a better individual/personal outcome for you and your family or if you're working on the further random evolution process of the whole human race.

I already did my part for the latter, now I'm trying to get old enough to see what's going on with this personal part of evolution - even if it means to perform hygienic procedures regularly.

("You" as general, not specific you)

[ERDoc]

Sure, but now you have (the ability) to choose, if you're working on a better individual/personal outcome for you and your family or if you're working on the further random evolution process of the whole human race.

I already did my part for the latter, now I'm trying to get old enough to see what's going on with this personal part of evolution - even if it means to perform hygienic procedures regularly.

("You" as general, not specific you)

Even when those hygienic procedures have a high cost/resource utilization and has been shown to have no benefit (and sometimes are more harmful)?