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by oakwhiz 269 days ago
Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?
3 comments

Interesting question, short answer - almost certainly not any more or less than you are already, and to the degree it does, it almost certainly is making things better and not worse.

First - ~all food illness causing bacteria is denser than air. about 1000x denser. On its own, it won't float.

Second - almost all cutting motions are still going to throw it around. So you are already doing this when you cut or chop food. You are slicing cell walls, etc, releasing pathogens that exist inside. But it doesn't like aerosolize in the sense of floating around, because it's denser than air[1]. How far it goes depends on the cutting motion, etc.

Third - does ultrasonic make it better or worse - well, again, it doesn't overall float, so it's really a question of does it do anything to make go farther/less far, and does it do anything to destroy or the opposite?

44khz (used here) is a common ultrasonic frequency in cleaning[2] and leak detection.

In fact, it's also used to remove bacterial cells from surfaces at higher intensities (and detect them at lower intensities). It's actually one of the major ways non-heat pasteurization is done.

While it's not 100% at removing individual bacterial cells, even at super high intensity, ultrasonic frequencies are both detrimental to cell growth, and as used here, will cause lots and lots of bacterial death because of everything from cavitation to pressure changes to instantaneous heat to you name it.

Does it fling pathogens any further? Maybe? I'm sure there are some situations in which it will. But they don't seem normal. Like if you are just slicing raw meat or chicken, it's hard to see how it could do that.

Overall, it probably helps more than it hurts. As far as i can tell, it's not even a close question.

[1] It is possible to get the bacteria to float in air anyway due to brownian motion and other mechanisms, but it still seems overblown - the percent of food borne illness caused by inhaling bacteria vs eating underprepared food it is so small they don't even bother to track it. This knife is not going to change that.

[2] If you google it, you will also discover it's emitted by fearful rats. I don't know if the knife also scares rats away.

I think the parent is specifically referencing the point towards the end of the video where he shows smoke-like vapor coming off the food. It's not clear from your response if you are aware of that, so just wanted to clarify.
To me, it seems like you wrote a lot but never actually answered the question of the person you are responding to. A reminder: the question was does the blade aerosolize fluids. Based on the video (as soon as 10 seconds in) it sure looks like the answer is yes, to a much greater degree than a normal knife.
Errr, what?

First, you are not actually correct on the question.

Here, let me quote the question:

"Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?"

That is literally not "does it aerosolize fluids", which is what you claim the question is.

My first sentence: "Interesting question, short answer - almost certainly not any more or less than you are already, and to the degree it does, it almost certainly is making things better and not worse"

How is that not a literal answer?

Again, the question was about aerosolizing pathogens that cause foodborne illness, not just random fluids. So i explained why ultrasonic knives are not going to do that more than normal knife would, and assuming we only care about pathogens cause foodborne illness, will do so much less.

Sure, it can aerosolize lime juice. Lime juice is not a pathogen that causes food borne illness?

If your answer is atually meant to claim it aerosolizes pathogens much more than a normal knife, please cite data or studies or some other form of science. I can give you citations to literally every claim i made. I wrote most of the science reasons. The video does not show anything related to pathogens.

Otherwise, i think it is you who is not answering the question asked, which was not about fluids?

That's good point, aerosolized raw chicken meat water doesn't sound like a good time.
> That's good point

Why is it a good point?

Do you get disease at a rate we care about from smelling a fart? Or smelling raw chicken? Or cooking chicken and the aerosolize particles off that?

The tool seems to melt going off similar tech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNwHDWlA7gE

Why does you brain think it's a good point other than you want to be negative? Because nihilism is cooler than thinking?

Dentists do ultrasonic scaling, which a ultrasonic water spray and are not dropping like flies.

What is the good point here, tell us more, love to hear it.

Dentists did avoid aerosolising procedures when COVID protections were in place, along with upgrading to FFP3 masks and full face visors.
> Dentists do ultrasonic scaling, which a ultrasonic water spray and are not dropping like flies.

Dentists wear masks, and the human mouth doesn't tend to contain Salmonella

Good news - ~all food borne pathogens are much denser than air. Not like slightly, about 1000x denser.

You are going to have about as much aerosolized raw chicken meat water (ARCMW) whether you use an ultrasonic knife or not.

The ARCMW touched by the ultrasonic knife will probably have significantly less alive bacteria than the stuff touched by the regular knife.

Great question. It does seem like you would not want to use it for raw chicken.
As far as i can know, the science does not support this answer :) In fact, it is probably the opposite - you should definitely use it on raw chicken.
So it is essentially an electric tomato knife.
To be fair, plants are where you really need a sharp knife. There's a reason why they do these tests with tomatoes.