Happy UN hand-washing day

[hick0ry]

Always looking for an excuse for a party, it's Global Handwashing Day. Good luck dodging the flu this season, and worse. Once again, soap is the yardstick of civilization. Congrats to Euston, home of University College London, for coming in lowest in the study of fecal-bacteria-contaminated hands, but I find it a bit sad that I should have to

Comments

[kukla_tko42]

Hm. I only use antibacterial soap because it was functionally free from when thesigother was working at his last employer. I do prefer the non-antibacterial if I can get it.

Here's a question, though: What data do you have about the germ-x type of waterless hand sanitizer stuff?

[hick0ry]

Perhaps you guessed by the long silence that the answer was "I don't know and don't have time to check right now," but the universe has answered with a lovely review (reference to which I promptly lost) concluding alcohol-based gel hand sanitizers were great at what they did, which is kill live bacteria and some viruses (I still prefer virii, booes to the OED) but generally not bacterial cysts, faster and cheaper than hand washing (when you count the plumbing), and largely underutilized in doctors' offices. A glance through some other abstracts has no effect on absenteeism in elementary school children if they were assigned to hand-washing or hand-sanitizer use groups, and again their post-study focus group had the sanitizer winning on convenience. I suppose, like exercise, the best hand cleaning is the one you'll do, but both are better than either alone. A variety of non-alcohol gel products are out there, though, which seem more designed to remove money from careless purchasers than promote health.