If hand sanitizer kills 99.9% of germs, what stops us from using that all of the time instead of hand washing?

Question

If hand sanitizer kills 99.9% of germs, what stops us from using that all of the time instead of hand washing?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Hand sanitizer contains chemicals that are toxic to many plants and animals. We don’t want to be putting a lot of it down our drains where it goes into the oceans and hurts wildlife. In nature we need bacteria so we don’t want a lot of this in nature.
We also need bacteria on our skin. The sanitizer kills all bacteria allowing the harmful to thrive. Keeping a good balance on the skin is important.