If you have super filthy hands and you disinfect them, don’t you then have a bunch of bacteria corpses on your hands? Is there anything wrong with being covered in microscopic dead bodies?

Question

If you have super filthy hands and you disinfect them, don’t you then have a bunch of bacteria corpses on your hands? Is there anything wrong with being covered in microscopic dead bodies?

In: Biology

Answer 1

This is correct. When you wash things, you’re removing any stuff stuck to the surface, but adding hand sanitizer or spraying on disinfectant doesn’t actually remove anything.

That said, there isn’t anything wrong with being covered in dead (or even living) microbes. There’s microbes everywhere, on every surface, at all times. The overwhelming majority of them are completely harmless and normal. It’s only certain types that are bad, although there are some normal microbes that can be bad if they get into the wrong part of the body (like if you get some of your own poo into an injury, the bacteria that were harmless in your intestines can cause a nasty infection).