Testing Email Center in DEV environment

We want to set up a Dummy Test Email Account for use with our Email Center in 12.1.3

We can set up the email account and make it 'active' (whilst making the cloned/live accounts, inactive). And, as I understand it, the Download Processor, if switched on, will only poll active accounts?

However, I'm unsure about testing outbound emails from Service Requests? If we are doing full end to end testing - we would create an SR in CRM and email from the SR itself. Would this work in a Test Environment (obvs not using a 'real' email account)?

Just trying to make sure if we do this in our Test Environments, existing customers/employees won't be effected or get masses of emails from before the Clone date.