Talk:Fomite

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

COVID-19 Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject COVID-19, a project to coordinate efforts to improve all COVID-19-related articles. If you would like to help, you are invited to join and to participate in project discussions.COVID-19Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19Template:WikiProject COVID-19COVID-19 articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Medicine Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Microeditior123.

Above undated message substituted from

I beg your pardon, but anyone that has had to deal with fleas would disagree with the suggestion in the opening statement that parasites are inanimate. I have taken a semester of Human Parasitology at the Kansas Statue University and I can assure you that many parasites are quite animated. I suggest rephrasing the opening statement. Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 13:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IN REPLY: I don't think they intended to identify a flea as a Fomite, but rather identify it as a parasite that may be carried by a Fomite. Careful consideration of the wording reveals just that. -ASL

A fomite, by definition, is an inanimate object that has the potential to transmit disease/bacteria/pathogens. A flea can also do this, but a flea is not a fomite. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.11.139 (talk) 09:06, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence might need rewording for all the dinguses out there --129.1.30.7 (talk) 19:30, 8 February 2013 (UTC)--129.1.30.7 (talk) 19:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would water count as a fomite?

It's certainly a common inanimate substance that carries infectious organisms from host to host. Opinions?--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As water on its own is not an animate object (not alive), yes, I think it would count as a fomite.

Some people may have religious beliefs in which water is the source of all life, so water itself must be alive. I choose to share the scientific approach to water, in which it is not alive, and not an animate object. 81.71.153.25 (talk) 14:45, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Contaminated water can certainly act as a means of transmitting infections, but it is not an "object", and wouldn't be considered a fomite. Similarly, contaminated food is also not a fomite. The term is normally restricted to objects or surfaces in the environment: bowls, plates, utensils, doorknobs, tabletops, and so on. Contamination of food and water is normally treated as a separate means of transmission.

HScrimgeour (talk) 13:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed one of the references and its associated text: "A preliminary study also suggests that aerosols such as the ones in perfume assist viruses in traveling distances increasing the likelihood of transmission.^[1]"

The citation failed to include the title of the article ("Hypothesis on generating and tracer gas study regarding transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome through ventilation system in a general hospital"), but more important, the cited article deals with the use of aerosol perfume as a surrogate or "tracer" to study the spread of aerosols through a hospital ventilation system. As such, the article has nothing to do with fomites. The article also doesn't claim that "aerosols such as the ones in perfume assist viruses in traveling."

HScrimgeour (talk) 13:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article gives a source that's behind a paywall, but the breve over the ĕ in Latin normally indicates the short vowel [ɛ] rather than the long [eː]. (That is it's only purpose.) Is this (or in fact any) IPA given in that source? (The form fōmĕs with breve seems correct and agrees with other offline and online sources; I am merely disputing the contradicting IPA given in the article.) --SpecMade (talk) 00:55, 8 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the Germ Theory was a 19th century breakthrough,but this guy was talking about the transfer of germs in the 16th century. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.159.213.54 (talk) 22:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fracastoro's dedicated wikipedia entry translates the same sentence as "the essential seeds of the contagion", citing only the original Latin with no link, as compared to this page's "the original germs of the contagion", which comes from Wright's 1930 translation. I am unable to find the original Latin or any alternate translations to cite online. I, like the previous poster, was initially confused by the mention of "germs", but it is after all what Fracastoro meant: though he presumably didn't know of microbial life, he was referring to the invisible agents on the fomites that transmit disease, just without specific knowledge of what they were. So perhaps "germs" is a fair translation, despite requiring a somewhat old-fashioned or poetic interpretation of the word. I'd prefer "seeds", myself, given the context and the need to avoid confusion with the much-later germ theory of disease, but maybe it's appropriate: even in modern times, "germs" is an informal term, so his "germs" might be close enough to our "germs" to be the best choice there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chconnor (talk • contribs) 02:29, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The intro says

For humans, skin cells, hair, clothing, and bedding are common hospital sources of contamination of fomites.

Shouldn't blood, stool and saliva be listed here? Also, bedding seems to me to be a fomite itself, not so much a source of contamination of fomites. AxelBoldt (talk) 02:42, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is probably something simple, but the short ref in the Reference list does not link to the full ref in the Bibliography section, for Shors. All the others work, since I changed from sfn to harvnb templates in the articles as inline citations. I cannot see why the Shors link within the article does not work. I hope someone can see what is wrong and fix it. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:05, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Finally I saw that the year was incorrect in the short ref, 2013 instead of 2017. It works as designed now. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is a trivial, perhaps pedantic point, but

Are you sure of this statement in the article: "The French fomite, Italian fomite, Spanish fómite and Portuguese fómite or fômite, however, are derived directly from the Latin accusative singular fōmĭtēm, as usually happens with Latin common nouns."

I have always assumed it is the ablative or ablative/dative of the Latin noun that forms the equivalent word in the Romance languages.

I have not altered the text, since I am not expert in this area, but perhaps you should check. Marcasella (talk) 00:10, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]