Science Vs - Coronavirus: Should I Disinfect EVERYTHING?

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

There are reports that the coronavirus can survive on surfaces for days. So how careful should we be about cleaning the stuff we touch? And do we need to be disinfecting our groceries? To find out, we talk to pathologist and microbiologist Dr. Josh Santarpia and toxicologist Dr. Joshua King. UPDATE 4/7/20: An earlier version of this episode suggested that Alex was wiping down his groceries with bleach, but the wipes he was using didn't contain bleach. We've updated the episode. Here’s a link to our transcript: https://bit.ly/2VbYbTr  This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, Wendy Zukerman, Meg Driscoll, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Sinduja Srinivasan, and Laura Morris. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell and Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Lexi Krupp. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. A big thanks to all the researchers that we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Christine Bruhn, Dr. Erin Leigh Dicaprio, Prof. Kalmia Kniel, Dr. Linda Harris, Dr. Megan Freeman, Prof. Jovana Kovacevic, and others. And special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Not right now. It's tender times. I get it. I get it. Hold on one second. All right. I'm recording. Great.

Yeah. All right. Do'm recording. Great. Yeah. All right. Do you want to, can you introduce yourself? I'm Alex Bloomberg and I run Gimlet. You're my boss. I am. Hey, Wendy here from Science Versus. Yep, that's my boss, Alex Bloomberg, podcast king of Brooklyn.

And I called up Alex because he had some questions he wanted our help with. Questions about what he should do when he has to go out into the world and how careful he should be with the things that he touches. Tell me about what you're doing now, like when you get groceries. Okay. So right now we wipe down every individual grocery item that we get. Like with the Clorox wipe, we'll wipe down every single item and then we'll put it away. What do you do with like an apple? We don't wipe down an apple because that just feels like, that seems crazy.

We're not crazy. So that's the new normal for Alex and his grocery situation. But when he leaves the house for other stuff, his whole system falls apart. Like the other day, he went to get a pizza. Here's what I did. So I went out there, I had my Clorox wipe in one hand. And so I went in and I wiped off the bag handles

with the Clorox wipe. Uh-huh. And I was hoping that they had a machine for the credit card, but they didn't, so I had to hand the woman my credit card. When you realized that you had to hand her your credit card, what were you thinking? I was thinking, crap, now there's maybe she has it on her hands and it's going to be on the credit card.

Alex had come into this pizza place armed with a bunch of disinfectant wipes and so he yanked out one to wipe down the card. But then, to sign the receipt, she handed him a pen. Oh, crap. He wiped that down too, grabbed the pizza, and walked to the car. I still was like, there was a lot of contact, so I don't know, am I carrying it somewhere? So then I tried to open the car with my elbow, and then I sanitized. Alex pulled out the wipes again, sanitized the steering wheel, the handles,

and the dashboard of the car. I'm just, basically what I'm trying to do is just build a moat between me and the virus and every little boat that can get across that moat I'm trying to squash. And while he's doing all this, there's this one question in the back of his mind. It's a question that many of us have right now.

Am I crazy for doing this? That's what I want to know is, is this crazy or is this prudent? Like in this ever shifting line between crazy and obviously the thing you should be doing, where am I? Where am I on that line? Today on the show, we'll find out. We want to know, are everyday objects like credit cards, pens, packages actually dangerous? Could we really get infected just from touching the things around us? And if we can, what should we do about it? Ultimately, we're going to work out if we should all be living like Alex

or if he's crazy. And I'll call you back and I'll let you know. I can't wait. I cannot wait. All right. Thanks. Bye. Okay. Gaming this out. We know that what really puts you at risk of getting this coronavirus is being in close contact with someone who's infected. But for Alex or you or me to get sick from touching something, say a credit card, a few things would have to happen. First, someone who was infected, say that lady at the pizza shop, would have to somehow get this virus on that card. Then the virus would have to survive on that surface

and be infectious by the time you touched it. What's the chance of all that happening? To find out, we called up Josh Santapia at the University of Nebraska. He's just finished a study that can help us answer some of these questions. It was a study of 13 people with coronavirus who were on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. They were put into quarantine where Josh works, and each patient was given their own special room.

So the rooms were actually fairly nice. They were designed to be kind of like nice, but a little sterile, like hotel rooms. What Josh wanted to know was, while these people were living in these rooms, playing on their phone, watching TV, were they spreading virus around the room? And so he went hunting for the virus

to see where it might be lurking. He gathered up some nerd buddies and got dressed up for the occasion. A top hat and tails. Not really. We put on N95 and face shield, double gloves and a surgical gown. And while the patients were still in their rooms,

Josh and his team bustled around, swabbing all their stuff. So if you go to Walgreens or CVS, you can buy these little gauze pads that are in sterile packets. And what we use is very similar. And we would just, you know, we'd take little three by three swabs. And they really swabbed all around the rooms. We did everyone's cell phone and remote controls, like television remote controls, bedside tables,

the area where they were sleeping. We did their windowsill. It feels like you're playing the worst game of like an Easter egg hunt, like you're searching for the viral particles. What Josh was looking for in this study were genetic pieces of the coronavirus. And where did you find viral bits? I mean, essentially everywhere. We found evidence that, you know, there were at least pieces of the virus

in virtually every kind of surface that we sampled. Most of the exercise equipment, computers, iPads, reading glasses, and, yes, cell phones, were harbouring bits of this coronavirus. Viral pieces were also found on a lot of the people's bedside tables and bed rails, as well as the window ledges. And his isn't the only study to find this kind of thing. Other papers sampling patient rooms have also found evidence of this virus hanging about on surfaces. And the method Josh was using to find this virus, looking for its genetics, could only say that this virus was once there.

He couldn't tell whether it was still alive or not. For that, he needed to do a different experiment. So he took some of those genetic viral pieces, plopped them on some cells, and some of them got infected. And we've sort of run down that rabbit hole pretty far now. So at least some of these samples are infectious, it's looking like. I would say so, yes. I would be willing to say that at least in some fraction of the samples. And for us, it was a bit surprising because the people in his study weren't that sick. They had mild symptoms. The virus probably got around the room from people coughing and sneezing, maybe into their hands and then touching other stuff. Because after all, the virus doesn't have

little legs. It can't walk around on its own. No, it's not moving on its own. But, like, if you touch some spilled ink and it gets on your finger and then you touch the counter next to you, you've got ink on the counter, right? So it's kind of the same kind of thing. The ink isn't moving, you're moving the ink. Now, it's important to remember that studies like Josh's are testing rooms where

patients are living in. And yes, they find evidence of this virus all over their room. We don't know how much virus would be left behind from a sick person just, say, passing through a public space, like a grocery store. But if we're being cautious, we can assume that if someone, even with mild symptoms, went through an aisle touching cereal boxes and jam jars, it's possible that they might have left some bits of this virus behind. So a big question is how long would this virus survive? It turns out it depends a lot on the surface that the virus is on. So a couple of studies have looked at this, deliberately putting a bunch of virus on various

materials and then measuring how long it sticks around for. One study found that the coronavirus was undetectable on paper after just three hours. But when they put it on glass, they could still detect it two days later. With plastic and steel, it was even longer. They're looking at steel and plastic, seeing viability for several days. But a big caveat here is that all those studies are happening in a lab, where scientists are putting a specific amount of virus on each surface. And out here in the real world, we don't know exactly how much virus would end up on a plastic ketchup bottle that someone sneezed on. And because we don't know how much virus that bottle

started with, we don't know how much virus would still be there days later. Okay, so what does this all mean for you and me and my poor, cautious boss, Alex? Is he crazy or not? That's coming up just after the break. Welcome back. We just found out that this coronavirus might be able to last on some surfaces for a few days. So what does this mean for us as we go about our lives? And what does this mean for my boss?

Is he crazy or prudent? I talked to Josh Santapia at the University of Nebraska about all the things that Alex has been doing. My boss, Alex Bloomberg, is, so he's wiping down all of his grocery products. Is that a good thing to do um it occurred to me right i don't think it's crazy i think maybe you know doing it judiciously on on things is is not it's certainly not crazy okay the other thing that he did um okay he went to a pizza shop the other night and he had to hand over his credit card to the person at the pizza shop. And when she handed back his credit card, he then wiped it down. And then she handed him a pen to sign.

And then he wiped the pen before he touched it. Crazy or prudent? I mean, it's not crazy. In principle, you know, I think about it every time I hand my credit card to somebody that I was like, should I wipe this down? I mean, I can say that I haven't wiped it down, but the thoughts cross my mind. And there's a reason why Josh isn't wiping down his credit card and all of his groceries. And that's because he has another strategy to protect him. And it all comes back to a big leap that the virus has to make to get us sick. You see, even if

we touch something that has some virus on it, we don't think that's enough to get us sick. This virus isn't infecting our skin. We have to help it get into our body, typically by, say, rubbing our eyes, our nose, or our mouth. So if we go back to that credit card. I mean, are you going to put your credit card in your mouth? I don't put my credit card in my mouth, right? But I do wash my hands a lot, or I try to. And so I feel like most of these things, like money, money's dirty all the time. Everybody tells you money's dirty, even when... From the time I was a little kid, they were like, money's dirty, don't put money in your mouth. And so I don't put my credit card in my mouth and I don't put money in your mouth. And so, right, like I don't put my credit card in my mouth and I'll put money in my mouth because, you know, these are things that like other people handle all the time. And you don't ever know what kind of diseases other people have. If it's something you're just going to handle, I think it's good enough to just wash your hands. rather than going through individual moments in our lives, this is the broad message that people should have

is the virus gets in our body via our mouth, or I guess if you pick your nose. Mouth, nose, mucosa in general. But yeah, mouth and nose, I think are probably the big ones. What we're all trying to achieve here is just not getting viral particles into our body. That is the key. Yep.

So I don't think there's any need for, you know, zombie apocalypse level panic. I mean, if I'm going to put my mouth on it, I want to wipe it. If I'm not going to put my mouth on it, I think I can just wash my hands. That's just like a good life lesson, I feel like. So Josh is focusing on washing his hands after he touches stuff that might be contaminated. That's how he's mainly protecting himself from this coronavirus. But he says that if you do want to be super duper careful, you might as well wipe down your groceries. After all, we do know that disinfectants like bleach, alcohol and other stuff, it can kill this virus.

Okay, so that's for things you don't put in your mouth. You can wash your hands or you can wipe that stuff down with things like bleach. But what about foods that you are putting in your mouth, like that apple at Alex's house? You can't put bleach on that. Now, while it's not clear if you can get infected by ingesting this virus and no one has actually measured if this virus can survive on fresh produce, from what we're learning, it is plausible that you could get sick from putting a recently contaminated apple into your mouth. So how can we be sure to keep ourselves safe? One idea that's floating around the internet

is to wash our fruits and veggies with soap and water. The concern here though is that if you don't wash the soap off well enough or if it absorbs into the fruits and veggies and you eat it, it can damage the lining of your esophagus. That's the tube between your mouth and your gut. It can also upset your stomach. We asked Joshua King, a toxicologist at the University of Maryland, about the risks here. The likelihood that you're going to ingest a lot of soap, the kind of soap ingestion that would get you into a lot of trouble, is pretty unlikely. If you were going to do that every day for a while, well, you might experience some health effects. I think personally, I wouldn't do it, but I don't think you're likely to hurt yourself

that much by doing that. Joshua wasn't wild about the idea of sudsing up your produce. Neither were a bunch of academics that we reached out to or the FDA. There are other options here, though, like cooking your fruits and veggies. And in fact, a study found that this virus hates being cooked. In a lab, it was all dead after five minutes of heating at 70 degrees Celsius. That's like a low oven of around 160 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't work to chill this food though. The temperature of your fridge in that study didn't kill this virus. We have another idea, though.

To reduce your risk, you could wait a few days before you eat your produce. You could also buy prepackaged produce that no infected shopper could have gotten their mitts on in the last few days. I called up Alex to tell him what we found. Hello. Hey, Alex. How are you? I'm Alex. How are you? I'm good. How are you?

Good. I was recording even when I said hello. Oh. That's the kind of professional I am. Great. Okay. Well, here's the best science that we could get right now. Okay.

Okay. Can a takeout pizza box give me COVID? Okay. So there are a lot of evil stars that would have to align to get you sick that way. Okay. And so I'm going to go through them. So first, obviously, some viral particles would have had to have gotten

on the pizza box, the credit card, the pen, which means that either the person working at the pizza shop is sick themselves and they're shedding some virus, which can happen, or someone else who is sick touched their hand, a little bit of virus got in their hand, then little bit of virus got on your item. And then you would have to get that virus into your body. So just touching it, just having it on your hand, from what we know, probably can't infect you. It has to get inside your body. Got it. And then, and then one more thing has to happen is you'd have to get enough of this virus into your body so that it would take hold. And we don't know what that

enough is, but we don't think like one or two viral bits would be enough. So basically what I'm hearing is the likelihood of me touching a pizza box and somehow getting COVID are pretty low. A lot of things would have to go wrong, but it's not impossible. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So we spoke to a handful of academics about the kind of thing you're doing, and they all tended to say, it's very cautious, but it's not crazy. Oh, okay. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. Not crazy. I like that. So we're doing okay. We're doing the right thing. your body. You just need to focus on just not putting your hands in your mouth, up your nose, not scratching your eyes. Like that's the only thing you need to be thinking about rather than can I sanitize my world? Right. Right. But it's so, but I'm worried about like whether or not I can remember that all the time. Don't you like just like accidentally touch your face all the time?

But if that's the only thing you had to think about. It just gets complicated. It's like, okay, oh, I just accidentally touched the elevator button. Okay. Maintain hand until I get to a sink. Fine. Wait a sec. Wait a sec.

Okay. I have another solution for you. Okay. What about yo-yos? Two yo-yos in each hand. Then they're distracted at all times. I don't know. There's probably, because you conceivably could touch like your face with a yo-yo, but maybe like 50 pound weights, two big dogs, like two Rottweilers, one in each hand. Did science help you today, Alex? Yeah, it did help me.

Just keep your hands away from your face. And now time for a little NCVC. Time for some non-coronavirus content. NCVC for short. Close your eyes. If you're driving, keep your eyes open. It's raining. It's a big rainstorm. And it's just about to stop. You can hear the birdies just coming out, tweeting just a little. You go outside on the grass. You take a deep breath. And it smells amazing.

That sweet, earthy smell. Have you ever wondered, what is that? It turns out it has a name. Geosmin. And some of it is caused by bacteria. It's their little love potion to attract bugs that will help them spread out. Here's how it all works. First, the bacteria release little baby spores into the soil.

Then they release this scent, which attracts a particular type of bug called a springtail. They look a little bit like fleas. And the springtails are thinking, much like us, this smells great. They crawl over to the bacteria and the bacteria babies then latch onto the bug's feet and hitch a ride to a new spot where they'll grow up and begin the process all over again. So you can keep enjoying that sweet, sweet rain smell if you'd like, but you should know that it's meant for the springtail bugs and not for you. That's Science Versus.

Hey. Hey. Hey, Meryl LaHorne, producer at Science Versus. What's that? Hey, Wendy. How many citations in this week's episode? Um, there are 73. 73.

And if people want to find these citations, where should they go? They can go to our show notes and follow the link to the transcript. Thanks, Meryl. Good night. Good night. Good night. This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, me, Wendy Zuckerman, Meg Driscoll, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Sindhuja Srinivasan and Laura Morris.

We're edited by Blythe Terrell and Caitlin Kenny. Fact-checking by Lexi Krupp. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A big thanks to all the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Christine Brun, Dr. Erin Lee DiCaprio, Professor Kalmia Niel, Dr. Linda Harris, Dr. Megan Freeman, Professor Jovana Kovacevic and others.

And a special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.