Teaching young children, I took things like hand washing and covering sneezes seriously because we know how that can protect the classroom’s population from getting sick. On balance, though, we also discussed some of the research showing that some regular exposure to things helps your immune system get in some “practice” early in life. The article below calls it an “education.”
These findings are very preliminary, but they support a decades-old (and unfortunately named) idea called the hygiene hypothesis. In order to develop properly, the hypothesis holds — to avoid the hyper-reactive tendencies that underlie autoimmune and allergic disease — the immune system needs a certain type of stimulation early in life. It needs an education.
Yeah, there are numerous papers and studies that have looked at kids who grew up on farms, exposed to farm animals, hay, soil, manure, etc all having lower incidence of asthma, allergies and autoimmune reactions. The frequent exposure is thought to train the immune systems, particularly the anti-parasite part, to react appropriately rather than be unbounded. Not saying that hand washing isn’t a great idea, just that a little dirt in your life is a good thing.
Now getting back to the original issue, there are some bacteria that are just bad, and not only are they bad, but also require few organisms to cause disease. For instance enteroinvasive E. Coli requires millions of bacteria to cause disease on ingestion, while Shigella requires only a few (there have been lab experiments where a single one did). So did you put raw egg (salmonella), raw meat on the board (pretty much everything, particularly ground)? Well that’s a whole level of clean you need vs. you cut cooked meat or canned tuna on it…
I spent several years doing research on anaerobic digestion of domestic and industrial wastes, a large portion of which involved hands-on (literally) working with sewage sludge. I was rarely sick in those days and I always wondered if that work helped my immune system.
I just saw this article suggesting that we shouldn’t be limiting our children’s exposure to peanuts at early ages. Contrary to the current practice and suggestions.
What about microwaving a cutting board? Would this help at all in sanitation or sterilization? I know they recommend the microwaving of damp sponges to kill bacteria…
Sterilizing can be risky insofar as it gives a chance for opportunistic bad bacteria to take hold over the good/harmless bacteria. In a study of kitchen sponges, ones that were rinsed with soap and water and left to dry had a much safer balance of bacteria than those that were “sterilized” in microwaves or dishwashers.
I know this is an old post, but I wanted to thank you for doing the leg work. I came on here today because my dad was asking about cutting some denim. Now I have a good place to start as far as not catching my forge on fire.
Just wondering if you ended up using a PU leather or vinyl fabric in your glowforge and if so, at what settings? I have a 10 yard bolt of PU vinyl fabric I want to work with.
@gussruss hasn’t been around for a couple of years, but the answer is a very tentative yes. IF your PU leather is not actually vinyl or PVC, then yes it works fairly well.
If you don’t know what it’s made of, or in your case, you know it’s made of vinyl - it’s not worth having it eat the inside of your machine!
If your material is vinyl, or if there is any chance that it has vinyl in it, don’t put it in the Glowforge. Cutting even small amounts of vinyl will ruin the machine and risk your health.
I think some folks have posted settings and their experience cutting PU based “leather”.