Thread: Water, Heat and Pathogens

This is an issue which has been puzzling me. How can it be true that vapor- or steam cleaning* household devices kill germs instantly, while it takes 15 minutes in a pot of boiling water?

I don't think steam cleaning does kill things instantly, an autoclave takes about 10-20 minutes and it's reaching very high temperatures and pressure, and even that fails to kill some bacterial spores.

It's very simple..at higher temperatures (more rapid molecular activity), some bacteria are unable to survive, while others can. I doubt that "instant" literally means "instant" in that case.