Oral bacteria

[bindibadgi]

Hi all,

our Yr 11 kids are doing individual research projects, similar to the EEI in NSW I guess, & a few of them are keen to do microbiology.

In the last week I've had 4 come to talk to me about testing the effectiveness of toothpaste/mouthwash/natural remedies on the growth of oral bacteria, because their teacher told them it would be a great topic to investigate. I'm telling them that we can't cultutre oral bacteria or any bacteria from bodily fluids because of the risks, & that we can only buy cultures of bacteria approved for use in schools.

Another issue is that the poor kids have already done a lot of research & written up preliminary work, so now they have to rethink & redesign their projects because the teacher didn't come to see me first.

The teacher involved isn't pleased that I'm saying no about this. Has anyone else had this problem, & what have you told your staff/students? I for one am dead against culturing even a single colony from inside the mouths of our kids

Cheers,

[Labbie]

You are so very right. No oral or body fluids are allowed in NSW, and I believe soon it will be Australia. Because we are not able to know what we are growing.

[RosalieM]

Not that I would approve of such an activity either, but I wonder if they did it at home rather than school it would be different? That way there will be no contamination risks for other students and staff. They could just leave it in a sunny place to 'incubate' and you could supply the plates and seals. We had a student to a similar experiment with testing different hand wash samples. I provided the plates and they did the rest. I can't remember if I destroyed the plates or if they did it at home. I think they brought them in at the end of their experiment and I put them in the pressure cooker.

[Ocean Breeze]

I am wondering if a comprehensive risk assessment may be a way around it? Long shot though. I wouldnt like to sanction it at all!

The Risk Assessment way ,you could specify controls such as no cross handling of another students , wear gloves, no opening or viewing except under fume hood conditions, masks, hepa wash , autoclave of pathogenic waste etc

The teacher has to take into account that a prac like this will in effexct be selecting for resistant bugs.. eg mouth bugs >> kill with mouth wash>> estistant strains remain.

Maybe they havent thought this through, and mentioning a few of these scenarios may help them to realise the nature of what they are proposing