Which is More Effective: Washing Hands vs. Hand Sanitizer?
Many people consider rubbing their hands with Purell or an equivalent hand sanitizer the same as washing their hands. But is this actually true, or are all of us germ-phobic people actually letting our hands stay dirty?
Hand sanitizers are composed mainly of ethanol, an alcohol that is commonly used to clean off lab benches and keep things sterile while delicate experiments are being conducted. It is this high alcohol content that ensures that 99.9% of the common disease-causing bacteria on your hands is killed.
The hands are an important part to keep clean because they regularly come into contact with most of the known portals for disease on your body: this includes the mouth, nose and conjunctiva (or corners) of your eyes. The Centers for Disease Control recommend that you regularly wash your hands with soap and water, but when you are on the go and those things are unavailable, look to hand sanitizers as the next best thing. Soap and water removes dirt as well as kills germs, whereas hand sanitizers can only kill germs.
Both methods remove some of your safe, resident germs as they remove the dangerous, disease-causing ones. This is not unhealthy, as bacteria multiplies quickly and will replace what is gone in the blink of an eye. No data supports the conclusion that using anti-bacterial hand-sanitizers is unhealthy or causes disease.
The most important factor in cleaning your hands has more to do with the length of time you spend doing it than with the material you use. Washing your hands for just a few seconds