Do hand sanitizers really kill 99.99% of germs? How can they prove that’s true?
In: Biology
Its more to help with plausible deniability. Lets suppose a sanitizer could kill 100% of every pathogen it was tested on. You would be tempted to write 100%, but you cant account for all the unknown pathogens you HAVENT tested.
No company manufacturing a sterilizing agent **can guarantee with absolute certainty** that **every pathogen on the face of the earth** is killed by their product. They cant possibly know that to be true, who knows what strains are out there we have yet to discover. There could be a bacteria that EATS ethyl alcohol for breakfast.
So to cover their own asses in any potential law suit they write 99.99%.
If you could prove your son got deathly ill from a surface you cleaned using their product and could also prove the pathogen responsible wasn’t being killed by their product which claimed 100%. Boom. Easy lawsuit.
EDIT: As others have pointed out this also applies to the micro scale. You cant prove 100% you’ve killed every pathogen on a surface or could kill every type of pathogen on earth.
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