So, the place I live, it's in a large overpopulated metropolitan. The parking area is basically the road and it always had a strong stench of urine and remnants of cowdung, but today due to faulty sewers fecal matter had overflown onto the road and of c, no one had cleaned it. It's a deadend road so the only people stepping on it are people who live here, but I had to take care of my Motorbike there and had to clean it properly, so I could see stuff on my tires and while splashing the tires with water, I might have gotten a bit of stuff on my legs.
I felt deeply disgusted of my situation, but I felt scared of catching something as I am often exposed to stuff like this. The rented hotel I lived in has foot prints on the lift doors and it smelled of saliva and was painted red by marks of chweable tobacco product. The interesting thing is, I pay a premium to live in this place as every other place I went to smelled of sweat and piss (inside the rooms, this is outside, my room is neat and clean)
P.S: I sprayed isopropyl alcohol on everything I had touched just to sanitize it. But, isopropyl alcohol is apparently toxic and I am not supposed to use it frequently, what shall I do?
How can I keep myself safe and sane in this environment?
Bruh.
My germaphobia would just make me kms
You sound like a germophobe, to be honest. Yes, your situation is gross, but the human immune system is pretty amazing. Just look at how many people in New York City survive every day in a melting pot of subway germs.
Fecal matter and other organic waste can transmit disease and infection, especially if you get it in an open wound, but the chances of that happening if you clean and dress the wound soon after are very low. Even if a wound does get infected, we have medicine that can deal with that easily as long as it isn’t allowed to persist for a long time.
In my opinion, it sounds a little bit like you could benefit from therapy to become more comfortable with these feelings of revulsion towards normal exposure to germs. It is good to have sanitizer and stuff ready when you need it, but you also don’t need to suffer through continued panic after cleaning and disinfecting yourself from a gross exposure.
Wait, isopropyl alcohol is toxic even just for external use? I use it as a hand sanitizer daily.
https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/1076.pdf
If you wash it off, it's ok.
No, I haven't heard anything about that and I did some quick searching and couldn't find anything relevant either. Basically don't drink it or dump gallons of it in your local river.
You can't sanitize something that's dirty. First you need to clean it properly with soap and water. Iso alcohol is toxic TO DRINK. spray it all you want.
You should wash your hands with soap and water for 30 seconds, look up on you tube for a video on how to do it properly. Yes there are right and wrong ways to wash your hands.
You should boil all water you will drink. Ensure all food is cooked to a temp of >75C internally. Dont eat food that can't be, like salad or cut fruit. OK to eat fruit with an intact peel you remove yourself like orange or banana. Clean the unpeeled fruit and your hands with soap and water first.
If you are able, get vaccinated for all applicable disease.
Keep some oral rehydration solution (ORS) on hand in case you get some sort of diarrhea, which you eventually will. It can help you get better from a milder case. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Oral-Rehydration-Salts-Drink-(ORS)
Ultimately the problem is collective, you are likely to get all kinds of infectious disease until the sewage problem is resolved for the whole community. There is little 1 person can do in such a situation to fix it only for themselves.
