if someone sprays disinfectant and i can smell it from the other side of the room does that mean all the food in that room is contaminated with disinfectant?

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No, not really. Sure, a teeny, tiny, absolutely insignificant number of atoms from the disinfectant have landed on all the surfaces in the room, including food, but this is absolutely 100% insignificant (assuming it wasn’t sprayed near/towards the food where it was visibly landing on it).

    To put this into perspective, consider that there’s poop particles in the air all throughout your house in varying amounts, carried from your toilet, most famously on your toothbrush, which is often very close to the toilet (often in the same room). But in such tiny amounts as these, it’s entirely benign, and you’d never know!

    The world is slightly disgusting in harmless ways, like that. You have microscopic mites living in your eyelashes, there’s more bacteria per cell in your body than human, and I think we’re all very well educated nowadays on how easily bodily secretions such as snot, spittle, etc, are transferred to others through sneezing, physical contact with surface, etc, contaminating everything and everyone with potential illnesses.

    Such is life! Don’t worry about it :-)

    (Except the part about spreading things like COVID, do take precautions there).

    • cabbagee@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. If you can smell it, then there’s molecules in the air and that’s going to mean it’s also on the food. It’s completely insignificant though. Eating next to a dumpster doesn’t mean my food’s contaminated even though technically those same molecules that I’m smelling are getting on the food.

  • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    I think you mean pungent, I made the same mistake before.

    And no, it just means that you can smell disinfectant.

    Can you even contaminate things with a decontaminant?

    • Moghul@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Can you even contaminate things with a decontaminant?

      You absolutely can. Many commercial disinfectants and detergents (including dish soap) are poison.

    • Big P@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      If you drank disinfectant it would be bad for you, so I would say that you can contaminate food with it

    • Obinice@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Can you even contaminate things with a decontaminant?

      Good question! It’s all relative. There are things for which water would be considered a contaminant, but we don’t balk at adding it to our tea! :-D