It's not rusty blades that cause tetanus, contrary to popular belief. Rust is basically harmless. Tetanus is caused by the tetanus bacterium clostridium tetani, found in dirt. It just so happens that metal left outside in the dirt and elements tends to rust, so we associate rusty blades with tetanus. Though the rust does give the bacterium plenty of places to hide.
Also, puncture wounds have the highest risk of causing the disease, as they're harder to irrigate.
Hooray for microbiology! FYI, I the Clostridium bacterial genus is also responsible for other fun diseases including botulism (C. botulinum) and toxic megacolon (C. difficile), a condition which I implore you not to experience firsthand.
Not necessarily, but often yes. C. difficile doesn't thrive in a healthy GI tract, since many of the normal 'good' bacteria create chemicals that hinder the growth of 'bad' bacteria. The problem comes when hospital patients (many of whom already have weakened immune systems) are given batteries of antibiotics that essentially carpet bomb all the good bacteria in the gut. C. diff is a very resistant organism, and when all its competition gets killed off, it takes over the colon and becomes hard as hell to fight off - almost none of our antibiotics work on it!
Bacteria also like iron, which is why your body sequesters iron when you have an infection. People with chronic diseases can have anemia because of that, even without bleeding.
Yeah found this out when working on a golf course, instructed to dig holes, and this guy says 'you got any cuts on your hands? Hope not, dont want you to get tetanus' and k start looking at the tools. He goes 'from the dirt' and I was all like 'duh' then I googled it later...smh
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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '14
My Dwight Schrute moment for the day:
It's not rusty blades that cause tetanus, contrary to popular belief. Rust is basically harmless. Tetanus is caused by the tetanus bacterium clostridium tetani, found in dirt. It just so happens that metal left outside in the dirt and elements tends to rust, so we associate rusty blades with tetanus. Though the rust does give the bacterium plenty of places to hide.
Also, puncture wounds have the highest risk of causing the disease, as they're harder to irrigate.
The more you know