Article about disinfectant use on ropes

Mark Chisholm said:
Is your rope infected?
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I got really interested in this topic about 3 or 4 years ago specifically with regard to sterilization (note, not just disinfection) of pruning tools. E.g. we have a lot of black knot in my area, helped on by stubborn lack of any control by the City in it's "Natural Areas". I have seen large completely infected trees (Prunus) chipped up by "Certified Arborists", the spores likely spread everywhere willy nilly by the chipper, and then later trees on adjoining properties becoming infected and arborists removing these few years later and the cycle repeated. Great for business. (City advises residential homeowners to only bag the branches with spore bodies or to burn them - but our arborists here must have special HEPA chipper trucks I guess). Pet peeve, can you tell . . . .
There are very well documented and easily available guidelines for topical sterilization of tools/ instruments in medical settings that are graduated or progressive depending on whether you're dealing with bugs, bacteria and fungi, spores or most difficult to get rid of, prions (the latter in human or animal outbreaks). Some of these sterilization methods are damaging to tools (for example chlorine use corrodes tools quite quickly which is why dental offices hate public health guidelines mandating them to use bleach for instrument sterilization).
What I did find was what I thought at the time was a considerable disparity between NIH/ CDC medical sterilization guidelines and what was being touted in arborist publications at the time as disinfection/ sterilization practice (bucket of 15% bleach or some such).
As a result of this, for spores for example, I settled on 90% isopropanol and flaming the tools between cuts. Heresy I know, but maybe my lab background colours how I look at things. I have often remarked that I believe this would be an excellent topic for some further research, as would perhaps things like bark hail damage as a "vector" for fungal infection and perhaps topics like this.
As for soaking your ropes in isopropanol and distilled water, well whatever. I'd like to see some peer reviewed journal/ research supporting this. For me, 90% isopropanol on a terry towel rag rubbing away sap and then into the front load with rope wash is standard practice between pruning jobs where I'm taking out infected tree bits. But this is just me. Heresy I know. Just my 2 cents for this Sunday AM.
Cheers
 
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As an aside, autoclaving is used for some instruments, others no. But instruments must be cleaned according to manufacturers' recommendations. Commercial cleaning solutions usually have a DIN number (they're registered for that use) and there's a whole bunch of rules put out by each dental association/ registering body. These guidelines follow the CDC/ NIH guidelines alluded to above (Nouveau edit to address comment below: for levels of sterilization/ high-level disinfection/ low-level disinfection/ annihilation of lower level life forms as yet undetermined . . . ). Same for surgical instruments. In a nutshell, sorta.
(As an aside, we're lucky corona virus is labile (easy to kill), not airborne (like say measles virus) and spread in droplets - if it was as difficult to kill as spores say, we'd have even more of a mess).


Maintaining our sense of humour about it all . . . .
 
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