I suffer from contamination OCD. A while ago, I took care of a toddler and she urinated in her pants. I found out after a while so I had to disinfect every toy she touched and surfaces. However, I am worried that I didn’t clean all surfaces and she possibly sat on them. When I cleaned her, her hands were wet too. So it’s also possible that I missed some toys/surfaces. Is it okay that I didn’t clean those - will urine still be bacterial? Also she did touch me when I was changing her and it was wet but it was only a little. By the time I finished cleaning, my clothes dried up. - but I still did wash my clothes. I’m afraid my clothes touched curtains at my house (dried). Can urine transfer like that on to my curtains Please help. My main concern and question is - is dried urine transferrable the way I’m thinking it is ?
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3Urine is not like feces. It's a pretty clean liquid, actually. You should look it up.– Carey Gregory ♦Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 3:13
1 Answer
Without going into the psych of behavior, (OCD) from pure scientific aspect, your query may be answered by Locard's exchange principle. 1 from micro-biologic & pathologic aspect of query the bacterial counts of urine sample may range upto 100000 CFU to be labelled UTI. i.e. bacteriuria is not an infection. IDSA estimated asymptomatic bacteriuria prevalence of 1% to 5% in healthy, premenopausal women and 1.9% to 9.5% in pregnant women. Lactobacillus spp. predominate in female infants. from about 1 month of age to puberty diphtheroids, S. epidermidis, streptococci, and E. coli predominate. At puberty, women acquire an adult flora in which L. acidophilus, corynebacteria, peptostreptococci, staphylococci, streptococci, and Bacteroides predominate. After menopause, Yeasts (Torulopsis and Candida) are occasionally found. In the anterior urethra of humans, S. epidermidis, enterococci, and diphtheroids are found frequently; E. coli, Proteus, and Neisseria (nonpathogenic species) are reported occasionally (10 to 30 percent). Thus distal urethra contains a sparse mixed flora; these organisms are present in urine specimens (10000/ml).2 3
Now the decontamination & sterilization aspect, you may follow biosafety level which in this scenario which would be (BSL-1). you can dig deeper on your own.
But as essential nature of bacteria, consider this - estimated total number of bacteria in the 70 kg "reference man" is 3.8·10^13.
As prudent individual,there is nothing to worry about- this is what be 1 line answer.
