Can salmonella be airborne from poop/terrarium?

Hello, simple question...

I have an enclosed terrarium with almost poor ventilation. When she poops and I open the door it almost seems as its pungent enough to bite at my nose/throat.

If there's a risk of airborne salmonella i'll get rid of her. Any thoughts?

Salmonella is as harmless as a fly honestly, maybe not to a smaller child but to an older one or an adult its pretty harmless and goes away usually in 4-7 days from what I've researched...
I'd say its pretty hard to get.. Half the time I eat with my reptiles right on my arms or lap, I've had almost all of my reptiles poop on me once or twice when out of their enclosure.

It's not airborne at all, only way you can really get it 100% guaranteed is if you pick their feces up and eat it...

And it's not just reptiles that carry salmonella by the way. Eggs, chicken, dog food, probably cat food as well, beef, pork, really any poultry, sometimes even milk if contaminated. Along with eating fruits or veggies that came in contact with the feces of a carrier can sometimes give you salmonella.

Honestly I may once or twice gotten it already without really knowing as it just feels like you have a stomach flu probably from what I've heard.

It is not transmitted through the air. It's transmitted via contact with contaminated feces. This can be direct contact with poop or with a surface that has come in contact with poop. If the dragon walked through contaminated poop and then you put the dragon in your mouth like a little kid might then you run the risk of infection. It can be pretty bad and in some cases require hospitalization but just be sure to wash your hands thoroughly before and after handling poop or contaminated surfaces and it will minimize your risk. It is not something that can be transmitted via poop fumes from the tank.

As far as I know salmonella is transmitted by surfaces, so should be no worry for you. However, do look into improving the ventilation for your dragons sake. Ammonia fumes from waste can be very irritating to the eyes and airways, and poor air quality in general is bad for their health.

@venusandsaturn while not all reptiles carry salmonella, and not all strains of salmonella are equal either. Some pretty nasty outbreaks have been linked to reptiles though, so while it’s not necessary to frighten people over it underepresenting the situation isn’t helpful either.

True.. I guess I'm just not as worried with salmonella as some people, which probably isn't the best for my own health.
I do know now that it can be pretty dangerous depending on how serious you get it no matter the age somewhat after doing further research.

Thanks for the responses. I'm just a clean freak and i'm trying to minimize risks everywhere Thanks for the reassurance. And yeah the new cabinet needs better ventillation anyways, no time to cut the wood it's 1/2 inch thick so need to saw it. I do like to use disinfectant wipes when cleaning poops, lysol, and bleaching unscrewable carpets. I have seaweed hammocks that are a pain to clean luckily my dragon likes to poop on the smooth surfaces

I would be careful with the bleach products. If they aren't rinsed well the residue can be harmful. I like to use diluted F10SC which is safe when properly diluted and is an effective sanitizer.

You're much, much, much more likely to contract salmonella in your kitchen or from eating food in a restaurant than from your Bearded Dragon. You have to either touch Salmonella and then touch your mouth/nose/eyes, etc., or you have to ingest it. And people have much more harmful bacteria in our own feces, lol. So no, it's not at all airborne, and you're not going to contract it if you wash your hand after you handle her.

Back in the 60's and 70's they outlawed those very small turtles that people used to buy as pets, I've seen photos of people actually "wearing" those small turtles on their shirts. First of all, aquatic turtles do carry a much higher load of salmonella than Bearded Dragons do, but the problem really was people were walking around with those little turtles all day long, handling them with them close to their faces, and not washing their hands all day. Then they would either touch their mouths or they'd eat a meal, touching their food with their hands, and they'd ingest the bacteria.

You'll be fine. Again, there's likely a lot more Salmonella in your refrigerator than there is in your Dragon's poop.

EllenD":l7rve9r2 said:

You'll be fine. Again, there's likely a lot more Salmonella in your refrigerator than there is in your Dragon's poop.

Click to expand...

Probably so true. Now I guess this topic is going to be how to minimize salmonella risks in the kitchen. Teach me master.

I'm paranoid about leftover tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce. In even fastfood when they take something out of their fridge/freezer, it's usually on a cooled/heated plate/tubs on their production line.

At home, you take it out, temperature jumps, put it back in the fridge, and it goes down.

Like lettuce, it smells like dirt no matter how you wash it Idk how it grows or what fertilizers they use but I assume they get misted daily.

Washing your hands when handling or cleaning equipment, not allowing your dragon in food prep areas, and keeping a clean environment for your dragon are going to go a long way. Simple steps like not bathing your dragon in and not washing their equipment in the kitchen sink. The CDC has additional and more conservative guidelines (such as no free roaming and washing equipment outside), but I think unless you have kids or immune compromised individuals in the picture hand washing and keeping lizards out of the kitchen are the big ticket items. Personally I don’t worry about it much, but treat my critters as if they probaly have it. I take extra care to clean my kitchen when I prepare meals for others.

F10 is an excellent sanitizer and doesn’t have quite the fumes and chemicals Lysol and bleach do. You can also use it as a soak for porus items like fabric and possibly your rope ladder.

Some relevant info:

The CDC estimates about 6% of the annual 1.2 million cases per year (72,000) are associated with reptiles. 11% of cases aged under 21. Another source (below) cites the highest risk group as kids under five. Realistically, a healthy adult with good habits is probaly at pretty low risk. I would be inclined to give more conservative advice to anyone with lots of contact with babies, young kids or immune compromised people.

Interesting and relevant bit to the discussion at hand: “Additionally, in cases where there was no direct contact with the lizard or snakes, vacuum cleaners were identified as a potential source. The mechanical disturbance and agitation of settled dust containing microorganisms by a vacuum cleaner can provide a mechanism for the dispersal of bioaerosols [49]. It has been demonstrated vacuum cleaners can disperse bacteria emissions at concentrations as high at 10^5 bacteria per minute [50].” This article also has some information about the rate at which pet and wild reptiles have tested positive for salmonella.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5617995/

Kids are really at much higher risk than adults for contracting salmonella from reptiles. Of the outbreaks related to turtles 70% of cases between 2011-2013 were in kids under 10. While some people were also infected without interacting with the turtle in the home, most had contact with the turtle, turtle water or equipment. Small turtles are might seen as toys by children and the 1974 ban on small turtle sales (<4” carapace) was aimed at reducing the exposure of children to turtles they would be likely to play with or put in their mouths.

A few years back there was a salmonella outbreak linked to bearded dragons. There were 166 cases, which is pretty low considering dragon ownership. 59% of cases were under 5 years of age. As part of the CDC investigation breeding facilities and retailers were tested and 71% were positive for salmonella. Over 200 different strains were found.
https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/cotham-04-14/index.html

Another small outbreak was traced back to an owner who prepared food for a potluck and infected 19 individuals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21824356/

As for food safety, government agencies (CDC, FDA and such) put out lots of information about best practices. Some of these are pretty conservative (such as meat should always be well done) but things like holding temps, how long food can sit out, or how quickly it needs to be heated or cooled are based on the bacteria typically associated with the food as well as limiting the growth of it.

Well, as a person who has worked in labs for a good portion of their life, keeping your kitchen sanitized is actually not that difficult, but you do have to realize that no matter what you do and what precautions you take, there are going to be instances where people get "food poisoning" for one reason or the other. As you already mentioned, usually most cases of "food poisoning" happen when raw meat is frozen, then thawed, then frozen again, or when it's not heated up to temperature when it's cooked. So proper cooking and testing of internal meat temps helps, along with always using something to cut any raw meat or veggies on, such as a PLASTIC cutting-board, and using a separate PLASTIC cutting-board for each food item, and never re-using a cutting-board until it's been properly disinfected in very hot water. NEVER, EVER, EVER USE A WOODEN CUTTING-BOARD. EVER. That should be common sense, but it's not. They sell wooden cutting boards that are decorative, that's great, but think about that for a minute...

Quick story though, this will make everyone feel good, but it's something that a lot of people are totally unaware of: When I was in college working on my BS in Health Science, I took a lot of Microbiology classes, where we learned to streak-plate and such...well one of my professors made us do this lab simply to prove this point to us, and I'm very glad he did because again, this isn't something that you'd think was true...It was in early September in central Pa, so it's hot, in the 90's, just as the semester started. We took a pound of ground beef and put it out on paper towels with a piece of Saran-Wrap over them, and put it on the windowsill, right under the bright, hot sun beating down on it. We had a 4-hour lab twice a week, so we let this raw hamburger, which had never been frozen, sit out on the windowsill, under the direct sun in 90-degree weather, for a month...now imagine for a minute how badly that smelled after a couple of weeks...the ground beef was moldy, growing fuzz and such on it. He had purposely not spread the ground beef out so that the raw ground beef in the middle would still be raw and not at all "cooked" by the sun, the heat from the sun would just warm it up, and the internal temperature of the ball of ground-beef was around 70 degrees when he brought it down and stuck the probe-thermometer in it. So finally after it sat there for a month, we each took a little swab of the raw ground beef from the middle of the ball, and we each did several streak-plates using a loop and agar plates...Then he opened up a little cooler that had ice in it, and inside the cooler were a few bags of salad greens that he had just purchased from the grocery store that very morning on his way in to class, and he put them directly in the cooler with ice, so that the fresh, bagged salad would stay cold the entire time until we each took multiple swabs from it and also did streak-plates...Now when I took the swabs of the salad, I burnt the metal loop in the burner to completely disinfect it , as you do, and then very lightly just swabbed the outer leaves of the salad greens, that's it. We didn't swab the bag or anything...Well, the results made me want to vomit, as the streak plates for the raw ground-beef that had been literally festering under direct sunlight for a freaking month were obviously fiddled with different bacteria, BUT THE DAMN BAGGED SALAD PLATES LOOKED LIKE SOMETHING YOU'D SEE IN A CDC LAB...I won't go into the microscopy, but just know that you need to WASH, NOT JUST RINSE, WASH, SCRUB ANY BAGGED SALADS/GREENS/VEGGIES YOU BUY, EVEN IF YOU JUST BOUGHT THEM FRESH 10 MINUTES PRIOR. USE STEEL-WOOL AND BLEACH AND SCRUB THEM, LOL...