Are your deliveries, parcels and post safe?

With all this sterilisation and sanitisation, is there a risk that our personal immunities will be deficient? I should like to acquire some resistance to viruses by natural means. I would appreciate a scientific opinion on this.

There’s no simple answer, John. Everything which enters our bodies affects us in different ways; people who had received either the TB vaccine as a baby, or the smallpox vaccine, or both, were up to 2.5 times less likely to develop melanoma, which came as a surprise.

In Italy, Giuseppe Mastrangelo of the University of Padua in Italy and colleagues found that dairy workers in the province were far less likely to get lung cancer compared with their peers who worked in fields or orchards (Indoor and Built Environment, vol 13, p 35). The greater the number of cows, the greater the protection.

Harvey Checkoway at the University of Washington, and his team looked at cancer rates among female cotton textile workers in Shanghai, China, where detailed records reveal past exposures to endotoxin. Those with higher and longer endotoxin exposure on the job had a lower incidence of many cancer types, including lung, breast, liver, stomach and pancreatic cancer.

But it’s possibly better to get the dirt when you’re young. As we age our immune systems become less competent.

Acquiring resistance to disease (other than by artificial means such as vaccination) involves being infected and our natural defences successfully dealing with the problem. Bacterial infections are much better understood than viral ones. With most bacterial infections the infective dose is quite high but there are exceptions, such as E. coli O157:H7 for which it is estimated that between 10 and 100 bacteria can cause infection, which can be fatal.

Some virus infections such as the common cold and norovirus are common and highly infectious but not usually serious. On the other hand, smallpox was reputed to kill a third of its victims. It’s 40 years ago since smallpox was declared to have been eradicated but if it was used a weapon today, there might be few who still have any immunity. Mutation of viruses makes it more difficult to develop a vaccine, which is why the ‘flu vaccine may not offer protection against seasonal influenza.

I think it would be unwise to try and acquire immunity to viruses by natural means, especially during the current coronavirus outbreak.

Ian provides some examples of how our environment can affect our health.

Jenny – All the hand washing is likely to cause skin problems and I recently had to use hand-cream for the first time in my life. I suggest wearing nitrile gloves when you want protection. These can easily be washed for reuse – most easily done while still wearing them. When you do wash your hands and rinse thoroughly to remove soap.

To continue this convo I have switched to The Lobby.

Sadly, Brian, this is a universal condition. Which? Magazine is littered with minor howlers, too many and far too unimportant to fret over. We all do it from time to time. Proof-reading your own work and doing it on a screen is notoriously unreliable.

If you read George’s post it says that the error has been corrected. Keep up at the back. 😉

Richard – The title “Which?” includes a question mark.

There are two forms of the verb – You can practise as a dental surgeon or you can practice as a dental student.

In the sentence in the article “First and foremost, Public Health England (PHE) says it’s best for people to practise good hand hygiene” the usage as corrected is perfectly proper.

Indeed. although the issue is, I feel, unnecessarily convoluted. Late Middle English favoured ‘practise’ as the verb, whereas our US cousins use ‘practice’ for both the verb and the noun.

However, as Kate hints, in her earlier comment about orthography, the OED accepts ‘practice’ for ‘repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it’, while pointing out that ‘practise’ is slightly older and favoured by purists.

For linguistic masochists: Practise origin late Middle English: from Old French prractiser or medieval Latin practizare, alteration of practicare ‘perform, carry out’, from practica ‘practice’, from Greek praktikē, feminine (used as a noun), of praktikos (see practical)

Easier, more effective and cheaper to use gloves to open the mail, then wash the gloves with soap and water.

I wonder if the anti-bacterial spray has any effect on coronavirus.

🙂 I suppose if you’re inside your house and can be reasonably certain there are no contaminated surfaces inside then you can put gloves on without having to wash your hands, deal with materials entering the house, using the gloves, then wash the gloves with soap and water while wearing them, then remove them and continue as normal without gloves.

But however you do it, it’s a palaver.

As I see it the aim of the exercise is to help ensure that any contamination of my home is below what could cause infection. The passenger footwell of my car has three pairs of nitrile gloves on the floor – inside out – following loading the car with groceries at click & collect sessions. I take them off carefully before touching anything inside the car. When they are removed for washing in warm soapy water, inside and out, I will check for holes and after drying they will be ready for use.

When washing gloves that have just been used to open packages I just wash them with soapy water before removing them.

If I had the misfortune of sharing the house with someone who was infected I would go around disinfecting door handles and window sills.

If I did not wear gloves I would feel the need to be more thorough with hand washing and I’d rather not end up with eczema or dermatitis.

As Ian says, learning to take extra safety precautions is a palaver.

In my working life as an engineer, I have often visited plants where scrupulous clean conditions were enforced, e.g. to control hazardous substances or for other purposes. When I have to don all the appropriate clothing and PPE, even just for short visits, it gives me great respect for all those who have to work that way all the time, in their day jobs.

In the present pademic, having to take decisions about wether or not to don PPE in certain public spaces outside my home helps me to respect all the NHS, care workers and others who are now having to work that way.