Can HIV live on a bottle top?

Ok strange question but today I went to the beauty salon to get my nails done and she cut my cuticle slightly when she was grinding down my nail. She grabbed a bottle of this liquid stuff which stops bleeding quickly and touched my cut with the top of the bottle! It all happened so quickly I didn't have time to pull away. My question is, if someone had HIV and she did the same to them, what are the chances of me contracting it? How long can it live on something like a bottle top? I'm freaking out!

Don't freak out. From what you have described there is no way that HIV could be transmitted. It wouldn't live for very long on a bottle top and could only do so with the presence of blood (you would see the blood). HIV cannot live in dried blood or body fluid, so it would have to be fresh visible blood for there to even be a chance.

If infected visible blood were present it would still be practically impossible for you to be infected from what you described. The infected blood would have to have continuous contact and have enough of the virus in it before it would transmit.

Hep C transmission has been documented in nail salon settings as Hep C is easier to transmit/more infectious/hardier than HIV is. If manicurists do not use sterile instruments Hep C is more likely to be contracted (MANY more people have Hep C than HIV...at least in North America to be sure.

Don't freak out HIV is not an airborne or food-borne virus, and it does not live long outside the body. HIV can be found in the blood, semen, or vaginal fluid.

If your really worried, get a blood test.

Goodluck!

Answer: Studies have proven time and time again that HIV does not survive well outside the body. In artificially high concentrations produced in the lab, HIV drying that occurs outside of the body reduces the number of infectious viral particles by 99 percent in just a few hours. Since the concentration of HIV in blood or other bodily fluids is much lower, HIV drying outside the body virtually eliminates all infectious HIV particles therefore making the risk of HIV infection from blood or bodily fluids outside the body essentially zero.

Keep in mind that while HIV infection from infectious bodily fluids outside the body is essentially zero, other diseases like hepatitis B and C can and do occur. Therefore, any blood or bodily fluid outside the body should be considered a health risk and cleaned up using universal precautions and cleaning fluids that are known to kill viruses on contact.