Germs?

[Mr.Gumby]

I don't do anything when I buy a used whistle.. I just play it.

Hm,. yes. I thin that's standard practice for most people (the ones I know of anyway), unless a whistle arrives very dirty and neglected but that is very rarely the case. There is really no need to disinfect your environment all the time, use bit of sense and you'll be fine. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Can you be too clean?

Hygiene hypothesis

[DrPhill]

........ What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Oddly it is only the survivors that say that.

[Steve Bliven]

But that's paraphrased from Nietzsche who hasn't survived...

Best wishes.

Steve

[an seanduine]

Hmmm. Just found an old 'C' whistle I lost out in the garden last summer. . .I believe I'll suds it out. . .

Bob

[ahogrelius]

Sodium hypochlorite.

Not good on an aluminum whistle. It will corrode the aluminum badly!

[Mitch]

It is certainly an issue.

Back in the day I carted my whistle-emporium around this continent, I used vodka to disinfect "tried whistles".
But I could not do that with wooden whistles because it would bleach the wood and de-nature it in general.

I trialed many kinds of wood-friendly essential oils, but was finally put-right by an Indic friend on this board who said "Arr Derr - we have been using sandalwood as a broad-spectrum disinfectant for millenia!"
SAndalwood will disinfect most pathogens is very short order and will not de-nature plastics, metals or woods. And is is a very low histamine and will not trigger auto-immune reactions.

Unfortunately, most forms of sandalwood are nearing extinction and are becoming prohibitively expensive.

But then - for our purposes, it only takes a tiny amount to get the effect - and it can be in the parts-per-million to work.

[Tor]

Most wood is actually a disinfectant. Consider a breadboard, used for cutting not only bread, but meat, fish, vegetables etc. Just a piece of raw wood. An organic material by itself, it should have rotted away quickly, the way other organic materials do (e.g. the aforementioned meat, fish, vegetables). But it doesn't. It's fine after years and decades of use. The wood just needs a water rinse, and even without, it won't normally decay. Why? It's because the tree absorbs various 'poisons' from the soil, and deposits those in its own wood. Particularly in the hard core. Kills bacteria and other pathogens left and right. Quite unlike a plastic breadboard, I might add.. now, that's something that can quickly become unhygienic.

[Bob Wetherall]

We certainly are a weird species. We spend our teens and twenties (at least) attempting to lock lips (and more) with comparitive strangers of the appropriate sex and are then concerned about a few dried up germs.

[Wanderer]

I've owned dozens of used instruments over the years, especially back when I was heavily reviewing them. I would often sell most of the whistles I owned (keeping a couple of favorites) and combine that with the income I made from ad revenue on my website (which, at the time before Ad Block Plus, was substantial) and buy as many non-reviewed secondhand whistles as I could.

I almost never washed any of them before trying them out. In general, most germs don't survive very long outside of the body. If the whistles were gunky looking (which was almost never the case), I cleaned them off--because ew! But otherwise, I just played them as they are.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/how-long-do ... -body.aspx

[Tyler DelGregg]

After a water rinse, perhaps a sip of Scotch while playing will do the trick. I wouldn't want to pour good Scotch down the tube.

[Steve Bliven]

Do whistles with germs cause WHOAD? Or does this fall under the "don't discuss medical issues" prohibition?

Best wishes.

Steve

[ytliek]

I think WHOAD is caused by the germs on whistle forums. Chiff... Chiff...