I got some bags of flour and pancake mix today and they put them in a cardboard box for me.
When I got home, I opened the hatch to the SUV and let the sun hit them for a couple hours, then turned them all around so it would get the other side.
Closed it up and locked it and will deal with it in a couple days. sitting in the car at these cooler temperatures is not going to hurt it.
BTW, I’ve seen the info about how long the virus survives on different surfaces. What about regular paper, like mail or cereal boxes, etc? I know cardboard is about 24 hours. Plastics and metals are longer but nobody says anything about coated paper.
Paper should be about the same as cardboard. It absorbs moisture.
I have not seen anything specific regarding coated paper, or, for that matter, hard pressed (”calendered”) paper, other than one study on new Swiss Francs (pretty good, er, bad, virus survival - a few days, IIRC), but I’d assume coated and hard pressed paper to be nearly in the category of plastics and metal, painted surfaces, and so on.
OTOH, virus particles on hard pressed paper should respond to UV treatment (bright sun) much like virus particles on other hard surfaces. I’d assume a little “grey” area to be safe.
I’m also guessing the interior of a closed up car in direct sunlight on a hot sunny day will cook any human virus’ goose given 9-10 hours of heating. Would one day of such heat damage the pancake mix? (I guess if it has yeast in it, maybe so?)
I keep wondering if the 6 hours for cloth that I’ve seen stated in various places might vary with the type of cloth. My sense of it is that synthetics might be more, uh, hospitable to virus particles, but that’s just my guess. OTOH, irony would be if asbestos kills viruses quickly.