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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 29, 2016 - 04:42pm PT
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All this over-sanitizing
Staph? Pfffft! My bro got effing MRSA at his gym in Kanada.
Pretty sure over-sanitization was not the problem.
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 29, 2016 - 04:50pm PT
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The galloping MRSA, whooping mensies, etc.
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cat t.
climber
california
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Mar 29, 2016 - 05:38pm PT
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Pretty sure over-sanitization was not the problem. Well, in terms of the evolution of bacteria, treatment with antibiotics will select for (and allow the widespread propagation of) the antibiotic-resistant strains in the population. I'm just not sure how this principle scales down to an individual's skin.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Mar 30, 2016 - 02:10am PT
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There is a universal solution to the problem of getting staph from climbing gyms......
The same technique can be used to avoid getting VD from a Bangkok prostitute.
Now you tell me
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Mar 30, 2016 - 06:46am PT
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TradEddie posted All this over-sanitizing is just training your body to be weak.
People should not confuse basic sanitation (washing your hands after using the bathroom or before you eat or maybe not wearing your goddam climbing shoes into the bathroom) with "oversanitization." Antimicrobial soaps for basic hand hygiene is overdoing it but your average climber probably doesn't wash their hands enough in general. People 100 years ago with supposedly robust immune systems died to simple infections left and right.
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Mar 30, 2016 - 07:02am PT
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Looks like Nana Plaza, SLR, good times
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 30, 2016 - 07:13am PT
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HDDJ, exactly so. On the last post of the previous page cat t seems to imply over-sanitization
with over-use of anti-biotics. If you're going to a gym regularly you can't over-sanitize. My
bro-law almost lost an arm because he didn't plus he presented to two incompetent
Canadian doctors.
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cat t.
climber
california
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Mar 30, 2016 - 08:37am PT
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Sorry, I did not mean to imply that people should not be washing their hands, but rather that antibacterial soaps are a bad choice for everyday use. Ethanol based sanitizers shouldnt have the same antibiotic-resistance-selection effect.
Edit: and, perhaps, that non-inflamed cuts should be sanitized with ethanol and kept covered, NOT smothered in antibiotic ointment (unless, of course, they are already infected).
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TradEddie
Trad climber
Philadelphia, PA
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Mar 30, 2016 - 06:15pm PT
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If you're going to a gym regularly you can't over-sanitize. My
bro-law almost lost an arm because he didn't plus
Sorry, but I disagree. Use ordinary soap and warm water, not anti-microbial soaps. For gym equipment itself, using disinfectants is appropriate, but there's no reason to think gyms are any worse than the many other surfaces we share with other humans and animals every day. It's simply not possible for anyone to prove they caught MRSA from a gym without extensive microbiological and epidemiological analyses, MRSA may have been on their skin for months or years, possibly only the memorable abrasion happened in the gym.
TE
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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Mar 30, 2016 - 07:04pm PT
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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/soap-how-much-cleaner-does-it-actually-make-your-hands/258839/
One excerp:
"Is soap always clean? This may be disappointing to diehard germaphobes, but it's possible for soap to be crawling with bacteria as much as anything else. If you're storing your soap improperly, such as leaving it in a wet puddle on the edge of your sink, it gives bacteria a fertile place to multiply. When you use it, you basically wind up transferring germs from the soap directly to your hands.
In a thorough study of soap contamination, one team of U.S. researchers found that even among test subjects with great handwashing technique -- more on that in a minute -- soap that was already contaminated wound up increasing the number of bacteria on the subjects' hands after washing. "
I saw this phenomenon myself in an experiment we did in a medical microbiolgy class I took in grad school.
From a review article:
"The use of alcohol has been proposed as an option for hand hygiene. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the clinical evidence supporting the use of alcohol-based solutions in hospitals as an option for hand hygiene. Studies published between January 1992 and April 2002 in English and Thai, related to the effectiveness of alcohol-based solutions, were reviewed. The databases searched included Medline, DARE, CINAHL and Dissertation Abstracts International. All studies were assessed as having adequate methodological quality. Results of this systematic review supported that alcohol-based hand rubbing removes microorganisms effectively, requires less time and irritates hands less often than does handwashing with soap or other antiseptic agents and water. Furthermore, the availability of bedside alcohol-based solutions increases compliance with hand hygiene among health care workers."
Water helps rinse contaminants away.
Water plus clean soap rinses contaminants away, plus the soap itself has some germicidal properties via membrane disruption.
In gyms or public facilities that use refillable soap dispensers, you may be better off carrying your own small bottle of liquid soap.
60-70% ethyl alcohol is germicidal, it acts as a denaturant. Most hand sanitizers have only alcohol as the active ingredient. I use them when away from home.
As to germs residing in the skin, this is why it is useful to use a 60-70 % alcohol solution on a clean cotton ball to wipe your skin after shaving (aftershave is just alcohol with perfume. I just use alcohol after shaving my legs).
Yes it may be impossible to prove that one gets an infection from the gym, rather than introducing resident bacteria after a gym abrasion, but I have had hundreds of abrasion outside, where I didn't shower until the end of the day, and have never gotten an infection.
Whereas twice I have gotten staph infections following abrasions at the gym, one a serious MRSA infection that sent me to the ER.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 30, 2016 - 09:47pm PT
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Trad Eddie, I wasn't saying my bro-law got MRSA cause he didn't use
anti-whatever soap, I was just saying gyms are filthy places and they
don't keep them clean by any means. I agree that the anti-biotic soap is
not warranted and probably is bad for the environment. But a lot of people
could stand to use a lot better hygiene. One of these days I may go postal
on some cougher. And you should see my routine when I get a cart at Costco.
It isn't that I'm a germaphobe it's just that I have a morbid fear of cooties.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Mar 30, 2016 - 11:07pm PT
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How do you treat your staff if a crack at the gym infected it?
Go to the clinic, and tell the doctor you didn't use the right technique to avoid getting infected (see above). He will treat your staff with magic potions, which may or may not get rid of your specific infection.
Then, have the doctor examine and treat the crack, too.
Anti-baterial agents, like triclosan, are very common in soaps these days. You have to read the label, to ensure it's not an ingredient. A got a bottle of dish soap a while back, that didn't have any "anti-bacterial" claims on the labeling. The soap contained triclosan.
Not only have pathogens developed resistance to triclosan and other anti-baterial agents, the AB agents kill off beneficial bacteria in the soil, your gut, etc. Use of triclosan and other ABAs is sterilizing the environment, eliminating necessary bacteria that fuel natural biological cycles. For example, if the bacteria in the soil are killed off, they aren't available to perform the necessary composting functions to keep the soil fertile. A fertilizer salesman (like psycho killer Scott Peterson) will sell you petrochemicals and ammonium nitrate, but they're not going to produce naturally fertile soil from a sterile, Saharan wasteland.
So, there are at least two reasons to stop using anti-bacterial soaps.
Ethanol is probably safe. It is naturally produced in the wild, and 100 proof moonshine will kill off just about any bacteria. It rapidly evaporates and certain bacteria metabolize it to vinegar. It is not a persistent environmental poison.
Triclosan, by contrast, is a persistent environmental poison. The short-term, corporate-profitable benefit is at the expense of long-term environmental problems. Other anti-bacterial agents are also persistent environmental poisons.
The same thing is happening with that Monsanto herbicide, Roundup. It is a rather broad-spectrum herbicide, that targets just about anything that hasn't been genetically modified by Monsanto to be "Roundup Ready".
The short-term, Monsanto-profitable benefit has now led to the widespread elimination of "weeds" that are an integral part of the natural environment. For example, milkweed is the sole food source for monarch butterfly larvae. Roundup and similar herbicides have wiped out much of the American milkweed population, and with it the monarch butterfly population. Because Monsanto hasn't (yet) figured out how to monetize monarch butterflies, they don't care about the environmental disaster they've wrought.
BTW: Monsanto's claim that Roundup is safe is just another self-serving fraud to come from an amoral, rapacious corporation. Previously, Monsanto claimed that saccharine and Agent Orange were harmless, too. Both of those claims turned out to be blatant lies. Monsanto knew the dangers of their dioxin-based defoliant Agent Orange, but they concealed their research.
Right now, there is a wrongful death lawsuit against Monsanto, brought by the widow of a farmer in San Luis Obispo County. The lawsuit challenges Monsanto's claim that Roundup is safe.
Unfortunately, Monsanto's internal research, showing Roundup to be a deadly poison, is probably encrypted onto a computer system that is quite a bit more sophisticated than an iPhone 6.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Mar 31, 2016 - 01:50am PT
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Not staph but I caught toenail fungus in the Curry Camp showers. Been carrying it everywhere I go for the last ten years or so. :)
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Mar 31, 2016 - 05:27am PT
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Camp Curry is a deadly place.
Big pieces of Glacier point break off and fall.
Deer mice colonize tent cabins, and give people hanta virus.
The showers give you toenail fungus, which is cured by a medicine that can be deadly.
The Diarrheum offers all-you-can-eat E Coli.
The deer rear up and kick you with their hooves.
The bears use advanced MMA to get your food (not really deadly, if you back up and just watch as the bear fights your car to the death).
Catching a staph infection from a plywood offwidth is sounding pretty good, right about now . . . . . . . . .
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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Mar 31, 2016 - 07:41am PT
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Good post about the triclosan, Tom.
In general it bothers me that it's in consumer products. Should be saved for a hospital setting, where they need it.
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Mar 31, 2016 - 08:12am PT
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Great posts from you and Tom, thanks
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Mar 31, 2016 - 08:53am PT
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In general it bothers me that it's in consumer products.
It's because it's not regulated.
Until something is shown to be unsafe, the doctrine of business superiority through deregulation allows just about anything to happen.
Antibiotics used to be readily available, basically even without a prescription. Now, it is becoming known that tight control and judicious use is the best policy.
Antibiotics were widely prescribed, even for things like the flu, back in the day. They would be administered on a precautionary basis, even if there was no infection. Even today, the factory farmers use antibiotics to an amazingly excessive degree. For the farmers, it's cheaper to just shoot antibiotics into all their cows, once a month, than to deal with a few getting sick, and having to sequester and care for them.
Antibiotics have a similar effect on the environment to triclosan, because they also kill bacteria. Unmetabolized and discarded antibiotics get into the sewer systems, and then into the environment at large. Proper disposal of unwanted pharmaceuticals is a pressing concern these days.
There is also the issue that overuse of drugs has created antibiotic-resistant superbugs that have evolved faster than new drugs can be created. My uncle died, in California, of a superbug infection that the hospital didn't have any antibiotics for. It was like a super-resistant version of MRSA.
Another potentially dangerous class of popular household chemicals are all those artificial scents in soaps, detergents, fabric softeners and anti-static dryer sheets. Who knows what that stuff is? And what effect does it have on people, pets and plants? Basically, those artificial scents are "sweet smelling" volatile organic compounds, VOCs, which should be controlled and banned in California. They are petroleum-based organic chemicals that, by design, are volatile and readily disperse into the atmosphere. I don't see how the EPA doesn't classify them as VOCs.
When my neighbor runs the clothes dryer, I have to shut all the windows on that side of the house, or else those "pine fresh forest" toxins come inside and affect my breathing.
I don't understand why anyone would want those scented detergents. Not surprisingly, when I go to the big grocery store, the clear, unscented detergents are the ones that are sold out.
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Mar 31, 2016 - 09:35am PT
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I don't understand why anyone would want those scented detergents.
Because they stink from all the other toxins they probably habitually suck in?
Always informative, sir, thanks
edit; vvvvvvvvvvvv thanks for that as well!
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Mar 31, 2016 - 12:30pm PT
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I have to be very careful about exposure to many common ingredients in soaps and household products in general. For example Seventh Generation laundry soap contains two biocides: benzisothiazolamine and methylisothiazolamine. I had been using this product for some time, apparently they were acquired by a larger concern who wanted the brand but changed the ingredients. That one hit me hard. Too much to go into here.
There's a dish soap called Bright Green. No fragrances, ingredients list on the bottle looks cool. I started using it and all of a sudden I couldn't go near my kitchen sink without my exposed skin breaking out in a rash. Looked it up. Contains formaldehyde and a list of other nasties.
The ingredients lists on the labels are incomplete or downright false.
http://www.ewg.org is a great resource for sleuthing out what's in these things.
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Karen
Trad climber
Prescott, AZ ~ God's country!!!!
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Mar 31, 2016 - 02:00pm PT
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I'd like to share what happened to me in a climbing gym. Almost certain I contracted MRSA at a climbing gym. I was wearing shorts and of course sitting on the floor. One day I had this painful patch area on my upper rear thigh, it got worse and worse. Was out at JT when it swelled and turned into a hard and spreading patch.
I went to a doctor, he was a quack, he thought it was a spider bite and sent me on my way.
It only got worse and ended up at the ER. I was immediately put on some very powerful IV antibiotic. It helped some but by this point it had spread all the way around my body.
Eventually it got under control. I never want this experience again.
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