iraq v1.0

digging through drawers last night, i found a major dick...

can bar soap get dirty?

occasionally, this question comes to mind. is seems wholly possible for bar, and liquid for that matter, soap to become dirty itself. how then do you clean dirty soap... with more soap?

i found one article that explained a bit of the resolve to this inquiry:

"according to a series of tests conducted in the early 1980s, bars of soap are often covered with bacteria and carry a higher load than you'd find inside a liquid dispenser. But no one knows for sure whether this dirty soap will actually transfer its germs to your hands during a wash. in fact, what little clinical evidence there is suggests that dirty soap isn't so bad. a study from 1965 and another from 1988 used similar methodologies: researchers coated bars of soap in the lab with e. coli and other nasty bacteria, and then gave them to test subjects for a vigorous hand-wash. both teams found no transfer of contamination from the dirty soap. however, both studies were tainted by potential conflicts of interest: the first was conducted by proctor and gamble, and the second came from the dial corp. still, there's no good evidence to contradict these studies, and it's likely that the bacteria on a dirty bar would just wash off when you rinsed your hands. in other words, you'd be cleaning the soap as you cleaned your hands."

very interesting. the study from 1988 can be found here.

the article continues and notes that "recent hand-hygiene studies in the developing world have found that washing with soap and water reduces infections even when the water supply might be contaminated. dirty water, like dirty soap, might not make washing less effective. even under the best conditions, washing your hands can actually increase the number of microorganisms present on your hands, thanks to contaminated surfaces near the sink, splashes of contaminated water, or improperly dried hands. (in general, it's safer to leave your hands unwashed than to leave them wet.)"

i find this fascinating and disturbing all the same.

changes

there seems to be a pattern of threes in my life: flat tires on the bike, meals in a day, and major life events...