If hand sanitizer kills 99.9% of germs, what stops us from using that all of the time instead of hand washing?
In: Biology
A few dodgy answers on this thread.
Hand sanitiser is very good at killing most bacteria and viruses and actually better for the skin on your hands than washing with soap and water if you’re cleaning your hands regularly. There are a few specific bacteria that hand sanitiser cannot kill, however, due to their structure. Usually these are found in faeces or soil.
I work in a hospital and the recommendation is to use hand sanitiser except in a few specific circumstances (your hands are visibly dirty, you’ve been to the bathroom, or a patient has an infection with a bacteria which is known to not be susceptible to sanitiser).
There’s now even a surgical scrub which surgeons use before surgery (instead of scrubbing with antiseptic soap) which is essentially just sanitiser and is approved for use as the sole scrub.
Out and about in general life, your hands get visibly dirty and you’re washing your hands more after going to the bathroom- so this is why you probably need to use soap and water. However in a hospital we are cleaning our hands almost every minute – they don’t get visibly dirty, it’s just because we are moving between patients and rooms. So we use hand sanitiser 95% of the time because it’s just as good at killing bacteria and its quicker, easier, and better for your skin.
Tldr hand sanitizer is good unless you’re hands are dirty or you’ve gone to the bathroom
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