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Is it okay to microwave nebulizer or in baby bottle sterilizer?
MAC & Bronchiectasis | Last Active: Oct 25, 2023 | Replies (70)Comment receiving replies
For all concerned about keeping your equipment clean, remember NTM live encapsulated in a biofilm. If you regularly clean your equipment, using soap, hot water and a bottle brush to scrub all accessible surfaces, then rinsing and air drying, you are denying those nasty little bugs a place to thrive. So daily sterilization or alcohol soaks are not strictly necessary. But I won't deny I am also a weekly boiler of my equipment.
But, here's something else to think about. How do you clean inhalers holders (not the canister of medication), spacers, water bottles and straws? Your bathroom glass? These should get the same scrub and soak treatment on a very regular basis. Anything that can tolerate it goes through the sanitizer cycle (148F) in my dishwasher.
We used to hike in Arizona, where desert fever was a big concern, and our friends taught us all water bladders, bottles and straws had to be thoroughly cleaned and dried after every use - we have continued to use the same process everywhere, all the time, and our kids and grandkids do too.
How does everyone else clean these items?
Sue
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Sue, I started out after I began treatment by soaking the equipment in soap and hot water, rinsing with tap water, and air drying while boiling once weekly. Then I learned about how stubborn this bug is.
I am pretty certain that our water has MAC. We don’t get the pink slime in bathroom areas that competes with it. It is also everywhere here. I realized that the tap water I was rinsing with surely decontaminated it with each wash.
I started to rinse it with distilled water, but it takes a lot of it to thoroughly rinse all the pieces, and it gets expensive when I do it twice a day.
So, after cleaning, I started putting it in a baby bottle sterilizer, but I never felt it got as hot as boiling would, even though steam was raging when I took the lid off.
After boiling the equipment in our hard, hard water, I would see the water gunk up the equipment. Finally, I just started rinsing the equipment really well under tap water immediately after using and then immediately rinsing it with distilled water, then boiling for 6 minutes with every use- twice daily.
I read about all the people soaking and rinsing their equipment in hot, soapy water. Do they rinse their equipment with the tap water that contains MAC? If it was soaked and washed to get the bacteria off, but their water contains MAC, and they then rinse it with water that contains MAC, is that cleaning it?
It just got easier for me to rinse with tap and distilled water and then boil in purified water that we have delivered. I just use a dedicated pot. I would really appreciate your insight. I remember you saying that your water does not have MAC, but if it did, what would you do? Thank you so much.