Which is more effective: washing your hands or using hand sanitizer?
Many people consider rubbing their hands with Purell or an equivalent hand sanitizer to be the same as washing their hands. But is this really true, or are all of us germaphobes letting our hands stay dirty?
Hand sanitizers are mostly made up of ethanol, an alcohol commonly used to clean lab benches and keep things sterile while performing delicate experiments. It is this high alcohol content that ensures that 99.9% of common bacteria that cause hand disease are killed.
Hands are an important part that needs to be kept clean because they regularly come into contact with most of the known portals of disease in your body: this includes your mouth, nose, and the conjunctiva (or corners) of your eyes. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that you wash your hands regularly with soap and water, but when you’re on the go and those things aren’t available, look to hand sanitizers as second best. Soap and water removes dirt and kills germs, while hand sanitizers can only kill germs.
Both methods eliminate some of your safe resident germs while eliminating the dangerous ones that cause illness. This is not bad for your health, as the bacteria multiply rapidly and will replace what is gone in no time. There is no data to support the conclusion that the use of antibacterial hand sanitizers is unhealthy or causes disease.
The most important factor when washing your hands has more to do with the time you spend doing it than with the material you use. Washing your hands for just a few seconds, the way most people wash their hands when they’re in the bathroom, is largely ineffective. Studies show that this brief handwashing will only kill a very small and insignificant number of germs, making it essentially useless. If you don’t have time to wash your hands more thoroughly, use hand sanitizer; it is more effective than a short wash. However, a longer hand washing of 30 seconds will kill more germs than quick sanitizer or hand sanitizer.
When is it important for you to wash your hands? After using the bathroom, of course, but also before eating or drinking, before and after touching raw meat, poultry, or eggs, after spending time in a public place or riding public transportation, and when you’re sick. Follow the rules of the cleaning method that is most effective for your time frame and you should be safe and prevent yourself from spreading harmful germs to others.
If we told you all the places you could pick up disease-causing germs, you might never leave home. Instead, remember to wash your hands thoroughly after being in a public place or before eating anything. Follow these simple rules and you should be safe from most bacteria that could make you sick. And if you’re on the go, don’t forget your sanitizer!
To learn more about keeping your environment clean and germ-free, visit our Denver Cleaning Service website and click through to the blog.