| Since I had posted on the use of alcohol for disinfecting, (note that I did not say sterlizing; if you don't know the difference, you need to), I'll post again. Tobaviruses are inactivated in alcohol. Flaming in alcohol is the standard technique microbiologists use for sterilizing metal tools. 10% bleach disinfects but does not sterilize. Same thing for the quats, phenols, etc. Autoclaves sterilize, so do germicidal lamps (but you have to know how to use them). Once the coat proteins of the viruses have been "fixed" in alcohol (or glutaraldehyde), the infectious capacity of the virus (that is, the ability to inject its RNA to take over the cell) has been reduced by several orders of magnitude.
Virologists I posed this question to agree with me. |