Keeping bottles sterilised

[mattsccm]

Strewth, you lot are fussy! If mine have water in them I just top them up next time I ride. Should I empty one I just fill it. Squash or beer? Just a swill out under the cold tap. If found mouldy then Milton.
They are replaced when lost or bust .doubt my oldest is more than a decade old though and the newest half thatbor a bit more.

[Brucey]

That there can be some pretty nasty things growing in water bottles is beyond doubt; I've managed to poison myself with an unclean bidon before now.

Most bugs are killed by boiling water but not all. I think the dishwasher works pretty well simply because there are very few bugs that survive being washed off by the hot, detergent-rich water. Even though it is pretty good, a dishwasher isn't perfect; I have occasionally found bits of food residue in the valves of bottles that have been through the dishwasher; encouragingly the lumps are no longer stuck to the plastic, but may have been too big to escape easily.

Not all germs are killed by boiling water and this is of particular concern if you fill your bottles with stuff other than water. For example Clostridium Botulinum is responsible for 'botulism' and this can survive boiling water. If a bottle is used for a non-acid energy drink and it is contaminated with the wrong thing, you can potentially poison yourself in a day or two. The toxin is so poisonous that only 1-2 ng of toxin per kg of body weight is enough to finish you off.

Because of concerns about botulism etc, non-acid canned goods are preserved at high temperatures; up to 130 degrees C is used, inside a kind of industrial pressure cooker.

cheers

[Norman H]

Oxygen is poisonous to C. botulinum, it's an obligate anaerobe.

[rualexander]

BTW, if using boiling water/steam for sterilisation, you actually need to submerge the bottle & lid in boiling water (or steam) for at least 3 minutes.

Strictly speaking you cannot sterilize anything using boiling water or steam at 100'C, you can only disinfect it.
Disinfection is really what we are talking about here.

I don't understand this. The dictionary says otherwise. And all those baby bottle sterilisers are incorrectly named?

I don't know anything about baby bottle sterilizers but if they are using boiling water or steam at 100'C then yes they would seem to be incorrectly named.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_(microbiology)

[Brucey]

Oxygen is poisonous to C. botulinum, it's an obligate anaerobe.

sure, but does that mean it (and others) cannot survive in the bottom of a bottle of energy drink?

cheers

[Vorpal]

Oxygen is poisonous to C. botulinum, it's an obligate anaerobe.

sure, but does that mean it (and others) cannot survive in the bottom of a bottle of energy drink?

cheers

Probably not. Food borne botulism usually comes from incorrectly canned goods.

edited to add: if botulism were added to a water bottle, I imagine it could survive there for long enough to kill someone, but the conditions are not ideal for growth.

[bogmyrtle]

It's the toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum that causes botulism.
Inadequate cooking followed by storage in anaerobic conditions with no or inadequate additional controlling factors cause sporulation resulting in the release of toxin. Inadequate cooking during canning or before vacuum packing or storage in oil are the common sources of botulism.
If you catch anything from water it's more likely to be something like Giardia.

Water bottles are unlikely to contain any pathogens unless they've been filled with water from a contaminated or inadequately treated water supply.

The riskiest thing about water bottles is drinking directly from a bottle that has been splattered with mud an ****.

[drossall]

I use Milton's occasionally too. I keep bottles for decades, but mine don't get used too heavily, and I only ever drink water. If I want a sports drink, I tend to buy it in a bottle.

[Norman H]

Oxygen is poisonous to C. botulinum, it's an obligate anaerobe.

sure, but does that mean it (and others) cannot survive in the bottom of a bottle of energy drink?

cheers

Its difficult to see how sufficiently anaerobic conditions would exist inside a water bottle, unless one went to extreme lengths to produce such conditions.

The main problem with food borne C. botulinum arises from poorly controlled canning processes. If the temperature is too low, or for any reason some cans don't see the correct temperature for sufficient time, there's a danger that the spores will not be killed and the organism will multiply under the anaerobic conditions inside the can.

Food borne botulism is thankfully rare these days but used to be much more common, and was responsible for many deaths, when home canning was more popular.

[Vorpal]

Water bottles are unlikely to contain any pathogens unless they've been filled with water from a contaminated or inadequately treated water supply.

The riskiest thing about water bottles is drinking directly from a bottle that has been splattered with mud an ****.

Except that water treatment mostly dissipates after a while, and when we drink some of our own micro-organisms can go into the water bottle. People who don't wash their water bottles out regularly are drinking more than just water.

When I was in school, we left some glasses of water sitting about and tested them periodically. It didn't take long before there were bacteria growing in them, and by about 19 hours they exceeded the safety threshold for drinking water. Admittedly, that is a conservative threshold, but I wouldn't want to drink it!

[Sweep]

Mine are usually scratched and most of the logos are missing after twelve months and are binned at this point,
tim-b

You care about riding with no advertising/disfigured advertising?
Must admit I very very rarely clean my bottles at all, though may have to as I get older and more delicate of constitution. And can't remember when I last threw one away. Seem pretty unbreakable to me.
But a good thread start. Must do some cleaning, particularly of the bottles thaf have had tabs in. I only ever use clear bottles for tabs so that I can keep an eye on anything too bad happening. I use poundshop baby steriliser.

[The utility cyclist]

Can anyone explain to me the difference between cleaning a bottle and sterilising it?

Sterilising a bottle is using something to kill germs, like with a baby bottle. Either a steam steriliser, or a chemical, like Milton.

I don't usually, but it might be a good idea when you have to use the same bottle day after day and have limited washing capability.

BTW, if using boiling water/steam for sterilisation, you actually need to submerge the bottle & lid in boiling water (or steam) for at least 3 minutes.

p.s. washing is generally enough if you do a reasonable job of it

Sorry but you don't, this is false information. Pour boiling water into the bottle, swish it round or shake with the lid on, squirt it out through the drinking nipple/hole. pour some boiling water over the outside of the lid, that's it.

You only need to boil standing 'dirty' water for one minute to kill off Cryptosporidium, Giardia and other bacteria, a sterilisation for a water bottle using the method above is plenty, unless you've had it in some god awful quag of nastiness in which case you'd probably need to soak it and scrub it first.

[Cyril Haearn]

I drink cordial in my bottles rather than boring old plain water. This leads to frequent attempts from life forms to establish colonies in the bottles.
At home they get washed with the dishes.
Failure to attend to the bottles promptly can allow the inhabitants to establish a village level of civilisation, I have a selection of bottle brushes available plus a toothbrush for the lid. This sets them back a bit. A long weekend can give them the opportunity to establish some towns.

After doing a week long event (or more) they can have established whole civilisations in the bottle, so that calls for the nuclear option. A bit of VWP sterilising powder (used for homebrewing) on the end of a teaspoon in the bottle full of cold water completely eradicates all trace of them, everything falls off the plastic leaving it with gleaming insides that are fit to drink from. After rinsing of course.
I think that it is a bleach base not a Sodium Metabisulphate steriliser.

My favourite type of bottle has a rubber stopper top which can be easily pulled out and reinserted for washing it and the rest of the nozzle.

Is that not a serious health hazard? What is cordial exactly?

[Cyril Haearn]

Rinse several times with clear water after cleaning (cleansing?)

[Flinders]

However carefully I clean mine (and I only ever use water), black stuff grows in the bit in the lid I drink from. The only way to get rid of it is to dismantle the whole thing, which is difficult. I can only see it because part of the cover is semi clear plastic- I suspect other people don't realise theirs are not clean because the outer bit of the mechanism is not clear plastic.
Eww.
Next replacement will be one where the nipple comes apart easily and completely, to clean.