Final answer:
The process called disinfection eliminates many or all microorganisms on inanimate objects, except bacterial spores. Sterilization, on the other hand, is the complete removal or killing of all microbes, including endospores. Filtration is a method that removes microbes physically without killing them.
Step-by-step explanation:
The process that results in the elimination of many or all microorganisms on inanimate objects, except for bacterial spores, is referred to as disinfection. Disinfection inactivates most microbes on the surface of a fomite using antimicrobial chemicals or heat. However, disinfection does not achieve sterile conditions due to the potential survival of endospores. In contrast, sterilization refers to the complete removal or killing of all vegetative cells, endospores, and viruses from an item or environment. An example of a method that solely removes rather than kills or inhibits microbes from samples is filtration. On tissues, for preventing infection, antiseptics are suitable for use, whereas disinfectants are used on nonliving surfaces. The effectiveness of chemical disinfectants has historically been compared to that of phenol.
Comparing different methods, sterilization is the most effective at completely removing microbes from a product. Other methods like sanitization and degerming reduce microbial numbers to safe levels or significant numbers, respectively. The term sanitization refers to the cleansing of fomites to achieve levels deemed safe for public health, not necessarily sterilizing the items.