I'm confident that once I'm done cleaning an estate pipe, that if you did bacteria and virus cultures on it, you wouldn't find anymore cooties than you would from a new pipe having been handled at the factory, by various distributors, shipping departments, looky-lou customers, and whoever had touched it, the packaging, etc. I'm a lot of a germaphobe, so this is important to me. I have a pretty thorough process. I DO wish I had an ozone chamber, or access to one for a fee, because I would certainly use it for that last line of defense...but then that too is theoretical, because you could dip a pipe in bleach for a week and kill every living thing on it or in it, but then if someone with contaminated hands touched it after the fact, then you're sort of back to some square early in the process (not square one, but maybe square two or three).
There's more gross stuff on your phone, that you then eat food with those same hands, than a sanitized estate pipe has. and like mentioned, toilets...I've watched people in their homes wipe the entire bathroom, including the toilet and floor, with the same rag. Where do you draw the line? Estate pipes, in the grand scheme of things, fall way, way down my list of gross/problematic situations.
I buy vintage double-edge razors too, where there's washing, boiling, and an extended 91% ISO bath. I wear thrifted clothes (everything but socks and underwear), where there's a 3-wash cycle process of attempting sanitization.
