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Archim3des wrote:Joe, when certain types of bacteria leave the gut, and re-enter the body by fecal-oral route, it becomes harmful, where before it was not.

True, they can be harmful. But dose is important. Drinking water can literally kill people, if they drink way too much of it. The mere presence of a bacteria in one pot is only one part of the story. Also, implying the smell is due to the bacteria is an assumption right now, is it not? (People have been implying this throughout the thread). No one, not even you, has done a study comparing the smell of pots with the bacteria found in the pots.

I'm testing six pots total. One, the original pot, and the five more that were sent off yesterday.

That's better than Mythbusters, who never do anything statistically significant on their show. The blow things up though so I'll give them a pass. But 6 is not exactly a gold star A+ study either. Since this is just hobbyists being curious, that's not a bad thing that the sample size is so low, but we have to be careful how much we can generalize this. Beyond that, I think it is important to find out, in a given contanimated pot, just how much is in there? I'll go back to my one example, the traces of cocaine on money is a funny, silly fact, but completely unimportant and useless from a health standpoint, since it is too small to have an effect on anyone.

I always assumed Devlin Mud was made by watering down manure

While its not a perfect fix, and cannot shield everyone, I am activating the ignore feature.
For me. For you.
I hope that you find peace, and wash your hands. I'm washing mine, on several fractalling levels of meaning.

I leave off with a quote from Ian McDiarmid that should cover any retort to this, as I no longer wish to argue.

Cannot shield everyone from what? Answering questions so people get a better understanding of the implications of your research? How strange you would avoid doing this.

In any case, I think we all can agree that we want folks to be fully informed. People should be aware of amounts of the contamination, not just the mere presence of it. Quantity and how it relates to the infectious dose level is orders of magnitude more useful than 'present' or 'not present' (things are harmless at certain doses, fatal at others, hurtful at some doses, helpful at others). This is a deeply important point that should not be neglected in the discussion.

Also, the method of sampling is important. Studies can contain flaws which lead to biased results. A couple of brief paragraphs on the method wouldn't be out of line, seeing as how easy it is for a person to introduce bacteria accidentally during a test. I am not super concerned with that here, but it should ALWAYS be a concern and always be mentioned.

And finally, and almost equally as important as dose/concentration, is the significance of the results. If my grand pappy smokes a pack a day and lives to 110, that's great for him, but it doesn't mean smoking is harmless in general. The sample size, of one, was too small to make generalizations. If 3 out of the 6 samples are contaminated in anyway, we need to be aware that this does not mean that 50% of all Delvan Mud jars are contaminated. It's too small a sample to say. Not to say the information isn't useful, but we need to be aware of its limitations. And like someone said way upthread, we shouldn't be against knowledge.

Joe Mama wrote:That's better than Mythbusters, who never do anything statistically significant on their show. The blow things up though so I'll give them a pass.

The Mythbusters crew have come out and said that A: Lots of the things they do (small scale tests epecially) are done enough times to get that statistically relevant result, but showing 100+ repetitions of anything in a 40 minute show would get real old, real fast.
B: With some of the larger ones, they simply don't have the space / time / budget / resources for too many tests, and/or simply need to prove it's possible.

But hey.

I look forward to the test results on the new bottles.

Ovion wrote:

Joe Mama wrote:That's better than Mythbusters, who never do anything statistically significant on their show. The blow things up though so I'll give them a pass.

The Mythbusters crew have come out and said that A: Lots of the things they do (small scale tests epecially) are done enough times to get that statistically relevant result, but showing 100+ repetitions of anything in a 40 minute show would get real old, real fast.
B: With some of the larger ones, they simply don't have the space / time / budget / resources for too many tests, and/or simply need to prove it's possible.

<text redacted; some humor just doesn't work in written form, and this used to be an example of that --Janthkin> thank you, I did not know that small scale tests are actually run many times by them. They don't seem to mention that on the show.

I am always looking forward to more results. But it isn't taboo to note the significance of any results.

I just think this thread is dangerous. A lot of the stuff being presented here is clearly posted in a way to try and influence other people which is a shame and completely defeats the purpose of this thread. There is only one biologist in this thread that seems to keep is head in place and not try to jump on conclusions.
Getting presence of poop bacteria in a pot shouldn't be that surprising. Most cities have water treatment systems, where poop and the likes are partially removed from the water to levels that are either not harmful or can be processed by mother nature. This water is then injected into rivers again from where it is collected downstream to serve a different city and although it is treated with Cl you will still get bacterial growth on it, including the ones that came from the poop in the first place.
Second the presence of the bacteria in the wash does not says anything about it's amount or even if it is growing there. You take a sample from the wash and you place on a plate filled with media suitable for bacteria to grow. Which does not mean they would or not would be growing. So far the only result we have from the light absorption it seem they don't grow, at least in the period tested.
Third I really doubt that the water used on paint is treated to kill bacteria.
Fourth the pots are not hermetically sealed so even without being opened bacteria can probably get into them. Remember paints dry on the current pots and you can get a dried pot from the store.

So so far the hypothesis that poop is in your wash and specially in large amounts seems to be missing supporting evidences. And even if it is it cannot be determined in which part of the process those bacteria were included. Finally no evidence that the smell is caused by the bacteria, try to UV treat a pot and see if the smells goes away might work as a test for this?
Hence can we please all calm down and wait for real data before jumping into conclusions?

UV treating the pots that smell (if indeed that is the cause of the smell in that specific pot) will kill of most bacteria. True.
But the dead bacteria are not magically transported out of the solution. Decomposing things smell. They smell... well, they smell like devlan mud.
Even if a pot has existed long enough that the bacteria have starved themselves out and all died, and contains no active bacteria, might still smell as a result of the bacteria living in it at one point.

I'm not suggesting, nor have I ever, that its what makes devlan mud smell.
I do think, based off my lab results and own personal findings, that it is possible for bacteria to exist in the pots. And not just S Sonnei, either.
The pots are translucent, which means algae might even be present.

Pots of GW paint are made in different places. Different available supplies.
Lets see if any regional data helps this along.
My pot of Devlan Mud came from France. Where did yours come from, and does it smell?

Archim3des wrote:
I do think, based off my lab results and own personal findings, that it is possible for bacteria to exist in the pots. And not just S Sonnei, either.
The pots are translucent, which means algae might even be present.

The question is then what should I expect this not to be the case?

Bacms wrote:Hence can we please all calm down and wait for real data before jumping into conclusions?

We aren't going to get any "real data" (statistically significant data), unless a wealthy Warhammer player decides to spend way too much time and money on this. More data however, is always interesting and always welcomed. (For me, especially on how much bacteria is in a pot, not just whether it is present or not.)

Sorry for not posting the results, but I've been busy doing other things in the lab.

I did a total cell count taken directly from three pots of wash, two are from my collection (Devlan Mud and Asurmen Blue) and another sample is taken from a pot of Devlan Mud from a local store that has been used by multiple people.

So, using phase-contrast microscopy I checked for cells under a counting chamber.

Devlan Mud (mine): 2.5 x 10^6 cell/cm3(ml)
Asurmen Blue (mine): 5 x 10^6 cell/cm3(ml)
Devlan Mud (store): 2.25 x 10^8 cell/cm3(ml)

This was taken as an average per large square from 20 counts.

I wanted to do a viable cell count but I couldn't get any more agar to grow the bacteria. Also the incubator was being used by someone actually doing research. I don't often use microbes since my research is in genetics so I have a tougher time getting materials for microbiology (I spend all my time amplifying DNA).

I still had some bacteria I grew on agar from earlier this week however, so I decided to identify them genetically using PCR and a handy-dandy database. I managed to grow five different strains:

Pityriosporum obiculare (a yeast, lives on your skin)
Corynebacterium acne (causes acne)
Staphylococcus aureus (very common bacteria)
Pseudomonas aeruginosa (causes some eye infections)
Staphylococcus pneumoniae (wasn't expecting this one )

The amplified DNA



Last sample is a control.

Snarky wrote:
Devlan Mud (mine): 2.5 x 10^6 cell/cm3(ml)
Asurmen Blue (mine): 5 x 10^6 cell/cm3(ml)
Devlan Mud (store): 2.25 x 10^8 cell/cm3(ml)

Staphylococcus pneumoniae (wasn't expecting this one )

Those numbers feel much closer to the truth than 120 cells per 12ML bottle. 225,000,000 cells per ml vs initial estimate of 10.
As for Staphylococcus pneumoniae, all I can say is what. the. hell.

Conforms to ASTM D-4236 my ass.

So Snarky what is your assessment, I'm a physicist so working at molecular scale is fine but bacteria is whole different scale unlike molecular level. So to me I need a comparative to make a relative judgement otherwise x10^6 could mean insignificant/normal/higher than what would be considered acceptable in the volume of cm3. It sounds small to me. But how many bacteria are in a normal batch of water? If it's sterilized I'm guessing close to zero, but tap water must have some bacteria even if it's tiny (I know we use flourine in the UK to keep teeth strong and also to reduce bacteria).

mwnciboo wrote:So Snarky what is your assessment, I'm a physicist so working at molecular scale is fine but bacteria is whole different scale unlike molecular level. So to me I need a comparative to make a relative judgement otherwise x10^6 could mean insignificant/normal/higher than what would be considered acceptable in the volume of cm3. It sounds small to me.

10^6 is on the low side, tap water has chemicals like chlorine to kill bacteria, but things like paint probably don't. I've admittedly left my wash open for hours on end so airborne bacteria have a hay-day entering moist containers.

Samples of 10^9 + where there are lots of bacteria are more cause for concern, while 10^6 is what I would say "safe".

Snarky wrote:
Samples of 10^9 + where there are lots of bacteria are more cause for concern, while 10^6 is what I would say "safe".

Your store bottle had microorganisms only slightly lower than that, again by a factor of ten. So accounting for some dying off in the delivery from manufacture to the store, would you say its possible that with even a modest 10% rate of decay in the numbers that the stuff is in fact being bottled with higher than what you list as a cause for concern?

The problem with my count is that I also counted non viable cells (i.e. dead cells)

In cell counts, you should discount these so my guess is that total viable cells is in fact, far lower.

For cell counts, sure.
But for purposes of potentially causing sickness in users?

IV vaccinations use inactive or dead cells, and work by introducing enough of the cells to cause a mild sickness that the body then overruns with antibodies. Dead pathogenic bacteria are still capable of being harmful. Again, I'm no biologist.

Archim3des wrote:Dead pathogenic bacteria are still capable of being harmful.

No doubt. But usually they are less capable of causing harm when dead. We don't want to have a count and pretend that it doesn't matter whether the bacteria are alive or dead. For example, 90% dead versus 90% alive is a big difference, since the main problem with bacteria is the concentration of them, the amount there, which determines the chance of infection. In some cases there may be toxins already secreted by the dead bacteria when they were alive, or immune reactions to dead bacteria components, but that's not why most people get sick from them. They get sick because enough living ones get inside someone and make it through the body's initial defenses.

Again, I'm no biologist.

Yes, we know, not sure we need constant reminders though.

Archim3des wrote:For cell counts, sure.
But for purposes of potentially causing sickness in users?

IV vaccinations use inactive or dead cells, and work by introducing enough of the cells to cause a mild sickness that the body then overruns with antibodies. Dead pathogenic bacteria are still capable of being harmful. Again, I'm no biologist.

I'm sorry but both statements are wrong.

Vaccinations work by introducing dead bacteria and their antigens (note, antigens are not toxins, they are anything that generate antibodies including the bacteria itself hence the name anti-gen [antibody generations]) cause an immune response. Naive T cells turn into memory T cells and form receptors that deal with the bacteria or anything foreign (anything it doesn't recognize as part of the body).

Antibodies are just a side product of the dead cells.

The disease symptoms are introduced when the bacteria was formerly alive, it would have produced toxins that still exist. Since it is impossible to destroy the toxins or inactivate them without destroying the bacterial cells usually, they are also introduced and cause mild illness. This goes away after a few days as the toxins are removed by the immune system.

Therefore, dead cells = not a big deal. They won't cause disease although if the toxin is present, they still might cause disease like symptoms which are different.

Can someone give me a quick summary of this?

Is it that the washes contain a lot of bacteria that causes the smell, or have I missed something?

RaptorsTallon wrote:Can someone give me a quick summary of this?

Is it that the washes contain a lot of bacteria that causes the smell, or have I missed something?

Ok, here's what I have gathered from all the information presented (plus a little digging by myself)

The washes are innately smelly. A sterile wash is just as bad smelling as a wash with bacteria inside it.

Some people have wash with a lot of bacteria inside it, but don't worry about it, usually these are just aerobic bacteria floating about.

For you brush lickers out there who want to know if it's safe to do so or not? My advice?

Best not to. A wash that smells particularly bad might have a nasty bacteria like E.Coli inside it and ingesting it may give you a stomach ache.


My conclusion? I'd say bacteria doesn't make the wash smell bad. It's probably the pigment more likely that causes the smell as the bacteria simply are not metabolizing the paint to create a smelly by product.

Bacteria do not smell by themselves. They need to metabolize a intermediate to create a smelly product.

Snarky wrote:

RaptorsTallon wrote:Can someone give me a quick summary of this?

Is it that the washes contain a lot of bacteria that causes the smell, or have I missed something?

Ok, here's what I have gathered from all the information presented (plus a little digging by myself)

The washes are innately smelly. A sterile wash is just as bad smelling as a wash with bacteria inside it.

Some people have wash with a lot of bacteria inside it, but don't worry about it, usually these are just aerobic bacteria floating about.

For you brush lickers out there who want to know if it's safe to do so or not? My advice?

Best not to. A wash that smells particularly bad might have a nasty bacteria like E.Coli inside it and ingesting it may give you a stomach ache.


My conclusion? I'd say bacteria doesn't make the wash smell bad. It's probably the pigment more likely that causes the smell as the bacteria simply are not metabolizing the paint to create a smelly by product.

Bacteria do not smell by themselves. They need to metabolize a intermediate to create a smelly product.

Thanks, so the smell is more from the chemical make up than from any bacteria living in the paint pot.

I can't seriously believe this thread went on this long.

The answer is so simple. Looking at the facts we can arrive at a good conclusion.

Devlan Mud = brown.
feces = brown.
bacteria eat and emit feces.

Just bottle some bacteria up with something for the little buggers to eat and presto you will have brown smelly "paint". Need a different color? Mix some food coloring in for the bacteria to eat.

On a more serious note: Snarky - I feel smarter for having read your posts. Kudos.

Snarky, you've been really helpful here, so please don't take this the wrong way. I think some of your information about harmful doses is way, way off. Not particularly your fault, since you're not a biologist but a neurologist, and I've also had some errors in my information. Namely that dead bacteria can cause a problem, rather than the toxins they leave behind. I was unaware, and posted my misconception as fact.

So here's a few facts I learned through about 5 minutes of searching online.

Shigella sonnei’s infectivity dose is very low; as few as 100-200 bacteria are needed to cause a clinical infection, shigellosis.

also

Shigella sonnei is spread mostly by means of fecal-oral transmission. Other possible modes of transmission can be from ingestion of contaminated food or water, and subcutaneous contact with inanimate objects and, most rarely, sexual contact (18).

also

Shigella sonnei, like all the other Shigella species, excrete shiga toxin that causes inflammatory response to the enteric cell wall and necrotic cell death of the colonic epithelium (2). The necrotic cell death is an extremely messy death for the cell due to the massive spill-out of all the intracellular content upon its death; as the result, it attracts the body’s cytokine-mediated immune response to clean up the mess; however, the cleaning up process of cell debris also causes a large local enteric inflammatory response that contributes to the shigellosis disease progression.

So that makes me wonder the precise degree that I'm wrong on the points previously mentioned Snarky.
10^9 bacteria is a problem, you say. 10,000,000,000 bacteria. Ten billion. But you found 10^8 bacteria in your store bottle. 1 billion. Lets say that 99% of those are dead. That leaves us with a paltry ten million active bacteria. 50,000 to 100,000 potential infectious doses. How many times can YOU dip your brush before running out?

That second quote snippet covers the concerns I had with it being transmittable by brush licking even a small amount, or by touching a model it has been brushed on (within 7 weeks, per montaro). Yikes.

The last part covers a particular aspect of the bacteria in question. That it does not go quietly when it dies. It leaves behind a rather large amount of toxic material. And by "it" I mean every single one of the remaining 990 Million bacteria that are inactive cells. And by inactive cells, I mean exploded toxic waste bags. Material that would not be destroyed by bleach, UV light, or even a old priest and a young priest. Its a particularly nasty little bug. So while ingesting the husks of dead bacteria would NOT be bad for you, as I had claimed, ingesting the entire contents of its cell wall which it spews out upon death WOULD be.

Here's my source on that, by the way http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Shigella_sonnei.

Again, Snarky, I appreciate much of what you've added to the thread. You're the only other individual doing tests at all. The initial batch of tests was pretty abysmal, but you went back and did your homework on it. I can't thank you enough for that. But please do take a second look into the points you've told me I'm wrong on. Almost every other biologist in the world would seem to disagree with you on a lot of it.

this has notting to do with the talked post here but my sister whas ones rusht to the hospitlal because they thouth she had an appendix but it turned out her stomach had instead of the normal 5% of bacteria she had 200%, and it came from her bowls, her bowls where pushing it into her stomach, she had a small growth between her stomach and bowls, as of today they still dont know what it whas?? and its been two years.

converter wrote:This has nothing to do with the originally discussed post, but my sister was once rushed to the hospital because they thought that she had an appendix, but it turned out that her stomach contained 200% of normal bacteria levels. This extra bacteria was originating from her bowls. Her bowls were pushing the excess bacteria into her stomach, and she had a small growth between her stomach and bowls. As of today they still don't know what was causing this, and they've been investigating for two years now.

We all have an appendix, unless it was removed at some point. The word that should be in the red section of the quote is appendicitis. Although i sympathize w/ the rushing to hospital. I had appendicitis when I was 6. Really, REALLY painful. I hope they find out why this was happening to your sister (Sorry for the revisions, I'm a bit of a Grammar Nazi).

Back on topic, I find the work done by both Archim3des and Snarky to be very informative. This is an educational thread, even if it addresses a topic some may frown upon (just get over it, guys. Fun for fun's sake). Personally, I am picking up several interesting facts from this thread to take with me back to my Chemistry class. Great work, both of you. I look forward to any additional information on the subject.

I am a biologist not a neurologist, not sure where you got that from....

There are many bacteria living in a surface or medium. The 10 billion there may be 99.99% commensals, bacteria that do no harm to you whatsoever. That 0.01% may include various bad bacteria that would cause serious harm. You have to understand, it's very difficult to quantify bacteria in solution, as microbiology techniques can only get you so far. Doing a total count using microscopy will only identify cells rather than strains.

I was commenting that 10^6 - 10^9 bacteria of all types is in general, a safe limit. As others have put before, bacteria are everywhere. In fact, humans share 70% of their DNA with bacteria. A safe limit of 10^6 - 10^9 cells of all bacteria is a safe limit in liquids is what I was implying, not 10^6 + cells of a very specific strain that causes disease.

When identifying bacteria, you have to do quite a lot, including serial dilutions and growing the bacteria on agar plates. I think Gymnogyps brushed on that earlier on in this thread.

You have to stop focusing on that one bacteria your lab found, trust me. There are lots more bacteria inside that pot of wash, most of them completely harmless. If you really did have nothing but Shigella in your wash and at high concentrations, I'd have to wonder what's going on, but what is likely is that the lab discounted commensal organisms like S.Aureus and gave you results of the most notable bacteria.

Also, first thing they teach you at uni with science is don't trust websites, I've got a review article highlighting how shigella gets you if you're still interested at the link below.

Trust me on this, if all 10^8 of that store bacteria was highly pathogenic bacteria that causes disease in healthy humans, then we would have a major epidemic akin to the black plague of the middle ages.

http://www.mediafire.com/?v0sfsvaz132pnk6

I'm not going to download a mediafire PDF... I dont trust websites
I DO trust the CDC and the first ten websites I see when I search for "Infectious dose of Shigella."
They all say it's between 10-200 cells.

So .001 percent of 1 billion... Ten thousand cells out of all of them that are actually shigella. I'll give you that, sure.
That's still up to 1000 infectious doses of it in the bottle. I can only dip my brush around 100 times, so that's still 10 doses per dip.
Edit: you said .001% of 10 billion, so using your numbers it's 100 doses a dip, potentially.

You ARE doing the math on this , right?
I only ask because you said before that there were 100 cells in the sample, and blamed lunch math.

Alright, so after having browsed this thread, and read the reactions, I'm going to try and look in to this. Now, I don't have any "fresh" paint pots just purchased, but I do have several Devlan muds I got about a year ago that I haven't touched yet. And I do have ready access to agar, and happen to be the NCOIC of Microbiology at the local Lab. I'll streak them up and see what I can find. Once I get growth, and results, I'll post the results from a Microbiology standpoint. As well as what it would mean for the average user.

Archim3des wrote:I'm not going to download a mediafire PDF... I dont trust websites
I DO trust the CDC and the first ten websites I see when I search for "Infectious dose of Shigella."
They all say it's between 10-200 cells.

Can you please clarify what is your really interest in this topic? It is clearly that you are ignoring evidence and trying to convince everyone that probably the best selling product on GW range is dangerous and should not be used. Plus you are spending money, and it is not cheap, to send samples to a microbiology lab for trying and get some evidence. Can we actually see the report you have from the lab? Did they really only identified the bacteria you are talking about? Seriously this thread should have been locked ages ago.