Farting in an operating room

If someone farts in an operating room, will he/she contaminate the room with germs? Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki and microbiologist Luke Tennent of Australia together devised an experiment to find out:

[Tennent] asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter.

Another source (below) claims that the 'colleague' who supplied the farts was, in fact, an eight-year-old boy:

Sydney Morning Herald - July 16, 2001

Incidentally, Dr. Kruszelnicki has been mentioned before on WU. See 'falling cats'.

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 28, 2020
Category: Hygiene | Flatulence | Experiments

Comments

I do remember this report, but it was presented as what it actually is, junk science. Unfortunately I can't remember where I saw the write up, but I do remember that it included a panel of pictures of Petri dishes with some gunk growing on them for emphasis. That was enough to put anyone off their lunch for the day.

Posted by KDP on 07/28/20 at 08:55 AM

The next time you have a third grader who needs a science fair idea...

Posted by crc on 07/28/20 at 11:28 AM

Wear your Shreddies in the operating room. Fart-filtering underwear:
https://www.myshreddies.com/

Posted by Virtual in Carnate on 07/28/20 at 12:22 PM

Not to be confused with this, which would be very uncomfortable as underwear: http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/shreddies_vs_shredded_wheat

Posted by ges on 07/28/20 at 04:21 PM

At last a proof that butt masks do work! That will shut up the anti-maskers with their arguments of "pants don't prevent farts, why should masks prevent disease".

Posted by Yudith on 07/30/20 at 06:13 AM

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