AIBU or is DH? - loo rolls for art/play

[JumpJockey]

I will honestly accept the opinion of MN majority on this one even if it means admitting he was right .

This morning dd was playing at trumpeting through the middle of an old kitchen roll. I went into the bathroom and picked up an empty loo roll tube off the window ledge for her to try, in case it made a different sound. DH (who is a doctor) frowned and said "No thanks, that can go in the bin". I noted that generations of children and Blue Peter presenters had been using loo roll middles for art/craft etc and nobody had died. He insisted that the presence of the loo roll in the bathroom meant it could have picked up horrible germs and wasn't safe.

Who was BU? Me, to potentially risk dd catching god knows what bathroom borne diseases? Or DH, for being massively over-worried?

JJ, what is DP's specialism ?

Why do you doubt him ?:o

Have you heard of risk-benefit ratio ?

Happy trumpeting!

Mythbusters looked at this in, for them, quite a scientific way using toothbrushes positioned at various distances from a toilet in a mock bathroom. IIRC they weren't able to grow anything from any of the toothbrushes after a week of 'normal' family bathroon use and so debinked this myth.

Not only have I been able to quote 'mythbusters' in defence of an argument I have also created a new word 'debinked'!!

Just realised Suzie beat me to it

But on the other hand, Pheebe, you have expanded the English language, I like debinked!

DH is a Chef and says that kitchen rolls could have rancid food residue on them, Salmonella or E-coli.

And the microwave does not kill germs, this is why any proper restaurant kitchen will not use them to heat up food.

You have to eat a ton of muck before you die!

Obviously cleanliness is important but I think this is taking caution a step too far. loo rolls are great! DP's son spent a whole day crafting with them in the summer hols - he had collected a cupboard full. All sorts of things that you can make. Children have been playing with them since loo roll was invented without ill effects.

I have the poster from this site up in my classroom. We love junk modelling!

www.hse.gov.uk/myth/august.htm

I don't think your DH was being unreasonable as much as teaching your DD good pratice in hygiene.
Although you may have a toilet roll holder, some people may be picking up the roll by the inside between wipes so myth or no myth, I wouldn't like my DC using whatever they'd donated

the germs are coming argghhh

ffs

Having said that, we happily handle money every day and who knows where the previous handler's fingers have been!

Some schools and nurseries claim that toilet roll insides are banned from crafts or need to be microwaved ... but it's all nonsense. One myth perpetuates another.

Use the rolls and be done with it.

DH has been ranting in the background while I've been reading this. He is a biologist by training:

"OK - the Mythbusters thing. They didn't prove that there would be no bacteria but their testing proved that the bacterial level within the bathroom was identical to a control kept outside of the bathroom.

Secondly the BMJ study. Did the study test the toilet roll before or after the creative play? It is highly likely that anything handled by Nursery school children will have higher than normal levels of E. Coli etc mostly due to the poor hygiene of said children.

And most importantly of all... what a load of bollocks. Bacteria are living organism and whilst many species can form spores and last for extremely long lengths of time in hostile conditions they cannot reproduce without a good food source. Dangerous bacteria that one would associate with the toilet do not feed on cardboard or paper. Without a food source any deposited colonies would not reproduce and thus would remain at a low safe level. There are bacteria everywhere and the risk from just about anything in the bathroom other than the faecal matter itself is tiny (from a biohazard point of view, the chemicals will kill ya). The kitchen on the otherhand is a nasty, nasty place. Food... especially wet food, gets spilled all the time, nooks and crannies aren't wiped properly, things aren't always sterilised, things that look clean aren't. I refer back again to Mythbusters and just how nasty a kitchen sponge

was found to be.

The risk of harm from bacteria is proportional to the food available for the bacteria to grow and reproduce; the conditions they are kept in; and the time allowed to grow. As one increases the food source and makes the condtions more favourable less time is needed to grow a dangerous sized colony. When food is scarce it can take an extraordinary length of time. The risk of infection and disease from a glass that had sweet squash left in it overnight, or a plate, or a chopping board etc is astronomically higher than a toilet roll inner left for months in a bathroom."

Bearing in mind this is an experiment in flushing with the toilet seat up and most people will flush with it down.

"I've followed the advice to microwave them for 10 seconds or so."

How on earth could a microwave disinfect cardboard? In only ten seconds, too? Where does this sort of nonsense come from? If you were really concerned that something contained potential pathogens, you'd either need to sterilise it chemically (in the sort of stuff that is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the risk appears to be empirically) or sterilise it in an autoclave (which would obviously reduce cardboard to pulp).

It also, by the way, won't do your microwave much good. If you're going to do this sort oif useless stuff, at least put a pint of water in there as well to reduce the risk of buggering up the magnetron in the oven.

Does anyone have a reference to what was in the BMJ? EBSCO is being recalcitrant tonight, but a search of the BMJ archive reveals one letter, BMJ 1996; 312 : 1325 (Published 25 May 1996), which has no evidence and a fairly sketchy proposed mechanism. It isn't a survey, study or any other sort of evidence: just a bloke from Cardiff speaking his mind.

I never thought of that before. I cannot believe my sons have survived.

Live & learn!

We are not allowed use them in my setting.

As a CM I just nuke them for a few minutes then use them.

Tokyonambu - you are right. It was an "Any Questions" article. Just a couple of paragraphs of theorising by a microbiologist. No evidence given at all. I can't find anything else relevant in the BMJ archives.

I'm with Slatterns DH here - keep playing with the toilet roll inners but stay out of the kitchen!

(P.S I am a GP)

Love that poster DannyBlanchFlower

A search of the med school electronic holdings and journal subscriptions for "toilet roll children" throws up one article, a US hurricane preparedness guide, which happens to mention children completely out of context with toilet rolls.

A more general search for "toilet roll" has similarly slim pickings, although it does include the BMJ letter we're talking about (for those that don't realise, a letter published in the BMJ correspondence column is science in the way that a letter published in the Metro is news) but does include the delights of "Learning to Question: The Roles of Multiple Hypotheses, Successive Approximations, Balloons and Toilet Paper in University Science Programs of Southwestern Amazonia" and "The role of toilet paper in studies of desert subterranean termites (Isoptera) in Arizona, USA: A substrate for nondestructive observations of foraging activity", which did at least brighten this grey rainy morning.

I know exactly where the hands that change the loo roll in my house have been - for one very very simple reason... to be otherwise would require my husband actually changing the chuffing thing!

I think the statement your DH used was U. 'No thanks, that can go in the bin'.
I had no idea about the unsanitary nature of toilet rolls. I only found out that the polystyrene meat trays that I sent in to DD nursery class were being discreetly thrown away. Apparently they are a choking hazard.
I will check on her current school policy, they are making a solar system soley out of cardboard and toilet rolls are especially welcome according the letter. No mention of whether they should be microwaved.

i think your dh is not really U maybe he just finds it gross to think of dd putting it next to her face, he hasn't said no kitchen roll either so not like he's stopped her from playing. i think its right to ban them from schools i really wouldnt want my dc playing with someones elses used loo roll tube, its quite nasty. i saw someone mention on here a while back about bringing in used old socks for craft too. it just makes me cringe to think of touching that kind of thing so wouldnt be happy with it for dcs
you can recycle the tube in recycling bin so its not like its wasteful to not use it for craft