Clean vs Sterile in a Permaculture Household

A fellow Permie brought up the discussion on the idea of clean verses sterile in another thread and it got me thinking...

When does something need to be sterile compared to just clean?

How do we sterilize something with natural substances?

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

One can supposedly sterilise a thing naturally by bringing it to a boil, submerged, once a day for three days. This is how they did it in bygone times. Or, one can use a pressure cooker.  At least, this is what they do in mushroom cultivation. If something needs to be truly sterile then this is probably the way.

I have also heard of holding things over a flame until they turn red. This will however cause oxidation and coloring.

In the past, I assumed sterilization was needed for something like canning. You boil the cans and the lid parts to make sure you are dealing with a sterilized storage vessel for your foods.

I now recently have heard that they do not recommend boiling the lids anymore! Apparently it effects the sealing compounds. Now they just want warm water and soap to clean it.

Timothy Norton wrote:You boil the cans and the lid parts to make sure you are dealing with a sterilized storage vessel

It's also worth noting that people who do indoor biology wouldn't call that sterile, even if it's good enough for home canning.

Wikipedia article on Sterilization:

Sterilization is distinct from disinfection, sanitization, and pasteurization, in that those methods reduce rather than eliminate all forms of life and biological agents present.

I don't sterilize anything in my day-to-day life. I guess I'd want to get as close as possible if I were going to take up surgery as a hobby or because qualified medical personnel were out of reach.

I have always had the theory that sterile is for hospitals.

Clean is for my home.  My theory is that a few germs helps build immunity.

I keep a clean house with natural products like vinegar which will not sterilize.

This:

https://permies.com/wiki/edible-clean

I hang my laundry on the line to let Mother Natures sun brighten and make the clothes smell so good.

I do sterilize canning jars and the other utensils for canning.

As Permies the folks on the forum probably know about microorganisms and that these are good things.  It is called beneficial soil bacteria and can be made with compost tea and mulching with compost tea.

All right, let me put out an example of something that I have heard that needs to be sterilized and see what you folks think?

There are a ton of products on the market to 'sterilize' baby bottles with a bunch of folks commonly talking about baby bottle hygiene.

Do baby bottles NEED to be sterilized or is clean good enough? How does one go about that in a Permie-friendly way?

Sterility doesn't last very long before it turns to just clean once exposed to air. My daughter survived on just clean baby bottles. Once she was past baby bottles and seeing the things she got in her mouth before intervention makes me question my efforts at just clean. Just very clean worked fine in my experience.

With the first baby, we just washed them in the sink like any other cup. With the second baby, we ran them through our dishwasher like any other cup.

Timothy Norton wrote:Do baby bottles NEED to be sterilized or is clean good enough? How does one go about that in a Permie-friendly way?

Baby stuff is a very special case (in terms of all the crap on the market for this)
1) new parents, particularly, are a fabulous market with money to burn as they're generally afraid and wanting to do the best they can amid massive nerves and a lot of social pressure to be as good a parent as everyone else (hence crazy baby marketing)
2) the risk of losing a baby is a horrible thing to contemplate, and i think nobody wants to be responsible for that (and feel the need to caution others about it)


That said, in my house, we go for clean, and Very Clean ("semi-sterile") only when we're making pickles or beer.  I'm not even particular with kombucha.
The only time I go for sterile is with contact lenses or with neti pot, and I'll boil things or use 70% alcohol.
I have taken care of relatives with staph infections and immune issues and I was a bit more careful than usual, but I still mostly rely on careful handwashing with soap and cleaning with soap and water, more than anything else.

For food, Sandor Katz made it clear to me that clean is good enough, and the results have been great. Beer and lacto pickles, occasionally things will go wrong, so I will rinse my containers with vodka or equivalent, which is often specified in the Chinese pickle recipes I use.

Timothy Norton wrote: Do baby bottles NEED to be sterilized or is clean good enough? How does one go about that in a Permie-friendly way?

I never sterilized my nipples when I fed my babies and they did not get sick.

That suggests to me a few things:
1. If a finished milk bottle is going to sit around for a while before washing, that will increase the risk of nasty things growing. At the least, I'd try to rinse the bottle well right after use. (My skin likely has natural good bugs that took care of this step, because I did not wash my nipples any more than usual.)
2. If you are needing to fill a bottle a long time before using, similar applies, but not as high a risk, as baby hasn't introduced bacteria to the milk at that point.
3. If someone in the family has the Martian death flu, I would absolutely up my game. Of if for some reason, baby is believed to be immunocompromised for some reason.

There is a fair bit of unsubstantiated evidence that one reason for increased auto immune and asthma type conditions in our populations, is because our children are growing up "too clean". There is evidence that farm kids (read more exposure to bacteria) are generally healthier microbe wise than city kids.

Story time: My son has had summer allergies for decades. Early summer, he was taking allergy pills because he couldn't cope with the huge pollen load. Then his wife brought home some sort of "flu". He got it from her, and when it was gone, so far, so were his pollen allergies. It was if his immune system suddenly had something else to worry about and realized the pollen was a false flag problem.  Correlation does not prove causation, but he's *really* happy and hoping it carries on.

Jay Angler wrote:There is a fair bit of...evidence that one reason for increased auto immune and asthma type conditions in our populations, is because our children are growing up "too clean". There is evidence that farm kids (read more exposure to bacteria) are generally healthier microbe wise than city kids.

Ha, second time posting this today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

Tereza Okava wrote:The only time I go for sterile is with contact lenses or with neti pot, and I'll boil things or use 70% alcohol.

Huh...I just use well-water with some salt in the neti-pot, but I live way north of the brain-eating amoeba. My wife does buy sterile saline spray for irrigating eyes -- I hadn't thought of that, but we sometimes just use the kitchen tap, too.

My curiosity was piqued; CDC says no need to sterilize baby bottles.

This comes up in our household from time to time. I encourage everyone at my home to try for "sanitary" but not "sterile". I think I mean the same thing as "clean" in the title when I use the word "sanitary". If you have ever been working with a child to teach them how to wash dishes, you know you really have to lower your standards or always redo their work.

We aim to eat the things we produce at home so I strongly believe the risk of issues is greatly reduced when you "grow you own".

The comments remind me of the idea of antibiotics. How they are anti good and bad biome. I am thankful they exist for life and death situations but man they are prescribed all the time and I would say that getting things sterile would need to happen as often as you'd really need antibiotics, not very often.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Tereza Okava wrote:neti pot

Huh...I just use well-water with some salt in the neti-pot, but I live way north of the brain-eating amoeba. My wife does buy sterile saline spray for irrigating eyes -- I hadn't thought of that, but we sometimes just use the kitchen tap, too.

Yeah i don't think we have the amoeba here either, but I also don't want to be Patient Zero in the article announcing that it's spread somewhere!! Plus when I'm using the neti pot it's generally because I'm already sick and my immunity is down, so I figure why push my luck. If I were using the neti every day I'd probably go for convenience over caution.

I also have no problem using tap water for eye wash, especially if you're trying to get something out, and I do that. (fingers crossed against amoebas).
With the contacts, I get a bit concerned about letting the lenses be stored in something that might allow bacterial growth. Most of the Really Really Bad Things seem to involve things sitting for a while as the infectious agents multiply- whether that's milk in a half-drunk baby bottle, chicken thawing on a kitchen counter, garlic pickled in oil, etc etc.

I do not advise this for anyone else: We don't sterilise anything.  I don't rinse outside fruit & veg.  We ferment naturally & compost everything.  I do carefully segregate among shoes/ floor, toilet/ hands, sponges & wipes top to bottom/ kitchen to bathroom.  This developed gradually as we became ever more aware of chemical contamination, microbiome integrity, our son's shifting allergies, farmkids' natural immunities, etc.