Blood on floor and shoes?

[Paulllll]

Dear experts:
  I am a technician in an anatomical pathology lab. I process the specimens and walked out of the lab and back to the adjacent office. There is usually some blood or body fluid on the floor of the lab due to tissue processing. Yesterday before leaving the office, I touched the floor and shoes in the office and rubbed my eyes due to itching. Then I took and wear the goggles. The episode was several hours later from the last time I wear the shoes and went out of the lab.  I have some questions.
1.   I am concerned whether some virus such as HCV or HIV would be brought into the floor of the office by my shoes.  How long would it take for them to be inactivated ? If they are still wet, is there still risk of transmission?
2.  Is there risk of HCV or HIV transmission from the goggles or by rubbing the eyes due to the contaminated hands?

Thank you very very much.

[Idyllic]

Wow your work environment should have a whole system of procedures and reporting if you are at risk in contracting any of the Hepatitis viruses. Be sure and get vaccinated for Hepatitis A & B

[sparky43]

I concur with what Surfsidegal and Dee said - miniscule risk of infection.    To add to SurfsideGal's example, medical personnel who get a needlestick from an HIV positive patient only get infected 0.3% of the time.   HIV is much more fragile than Hepatitis C.

I don't work in medicine, but I have seen medical professionals and lab techs who wear disposable covers on their shoes.   Even though the risk is very small, you may want to consider wearing these at work to lower the risk to near nonexistent and remove this as a concern.

If you still are worried about this incident, get tested, but remember that their is a window period for your body to develop antibodies.   For Hep C and HIV, it is around 12 weeks for almost all people and up to 6 months for a very small number of people.   If you want faster results, you can get a DNA-PCR test (which looks for the virus itself instead of the antibodies) after 2-3 weeks.   Again, getting tested would not be because we think you are infected but for your own peace of mind and because everyone should get tested once just to have a baseline in case you ever have an exposure in the future that does warrant concern.

[Dee1956]

Surfside Gal gave you good information.  If you are really worried, you could wait and get tested for all.  I would think if you work with blood this would be a normal occurrence in your line of work.  I have a family member who worked for a hospital and she was tested yearly.
Good luck, Dee

[SurfsideGal]

Even healthcare workers who get a needle-stick from an HCV positive patient have only a 1.8% chance of getting the virus. HIV dies extremely quickly outside of the body. HCV can live for days. I believe your risk is miniscule. If you continue to worry get tested.