Using urine to disinfect?

My father recently told me that he had learned during his time in the army that he could use (his own) urine to disinfect a wound. Now I wonder how it is possible that you can disinfect a wound with urine? Urine isn’t disinfectant, is it? Or is it more “cleaning” they mean? So just rinse the wound so it’s clean and try to prevent it from getting infected?

Asker: Jan, 20 years

Answer

Best,

Urine is sterile and quite acidic. In those circumstances, you can use urine to disinfect things if you don’t have anything else to hand. Urine contains waste products from our body, but they can do no harm if you want to disinfect them.

There are also people who drink urine, but there is no scientific evidence that it would be useful.

Kind regards,

Using urine to disinfect?

Answered by

Dr Jasper Verguts

Gynecology Obstetrics

Catholic University of Leuven
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/

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