I know this to be true, and wash my hands often. My son prefers hand sanitizer and will get annoyed when I ask him to wash his hands, despite me telling him its better than hand sanitizer. He asked me why and honestly, I dont know. Killing 99.9% of germs seems like pretty good odds but its something to do with the scrubbing motion, right?
In: Biology
Hand sanitizer kills germs, but it leaves their dead carcasses (and any other dirt and particulate) on your hands, where washing actually removes the material from your body.
Believe it or not there are good germs you are killing as well. You will eventually cause yourself to develop staph infections if you use sanitizer frequently. Unless you are dealing with an absolute urgent need to rid yourself of a pathogen, it would be wise to simply wash your hands to avoid evolution of a super bug on your own skin.
Hand sanitizer doesn’t necessarily clean 99.9% of germs in reality. Often times those are ideal conditions. Like taking a car apart that’s been designed to teach new mechanics and taking a hand me down car apart that a 17 year old has beaten to death. Two different worlds.
Washing your hands also provides a more efficient method of cleaning. Habd sanitizer won’t necessarily remove any dirt on your hands. Washing your hands with water rinses it off. You’re also right in that washing your hands is better at breaking down material on it like dirt, chemicals and bacteria/viruses.
Hand sanitizer is fine when you’re on the go but washing is always best.
>I know this to be true, and wash my hands often. My son prefers hand sanitizer and will get annoyed when I ask him to wash his hands, despite me telling him its better than hand sanitizer. He asked me why and honestly, I dont know. Killing 99.9% of germs seems like pretty good odds but its something to do with the scrubbing motion, right?
I completely understand how this may have gotten a bit lost during a pandemic, but killing microorganisms is not the point of washing your hands.
You wash your hands because you want to **remove** contaminants by rinsing them away. That *may* include microorganisms but is usually more readily applied to dirt, grease and all the fun bodily fluids that you, others, their pets and all the pigeons in the public park exude over the course of a day.
If you sanitize a hand covered in poo or dog hair you’ll have a hand covered in sterile poo and dog hair, not a clean hand.
It comes back to the surprise finding that soap doesn’t kill bacteria either. (I know we’re talking about virii, bear with me).
Alcohol in sanitizer works to break apart the protein strings that make up virii. But if there’s too much water (i.e. alcohol % too low), it doesn’t work. If there’s too little water (alcohol % too high), it also doesn’t work. You need both water AND alcohol, in the right proportions, for sanitizer to work properly. And there’s always some in the nooks and crannies of your skin that will see a wrong balance of water and alcohol and will survive the sanitizer attack.
Instead, why try and kill/denature the proteins in the virii when you can wash it away entirely. Same thing with bacteria. Soap doesn’t kill bacteria, but soap DOES help organic molecules like virii proteins and bacterial cell walls adhere to water molecules and make it much easier to wash away. And typically when you’re washing your hands with soapy water the amount of soapy water you’re using is orders of magnitude more than some water and alcohol in sanitizer.
Sanitizer is like a surgical pinpoint strike with a guided missile. Hand washing with soap is like nuking the entire site from orbit. Only way to be sure.
If the sanitizer contains other chemicals besides volatile alcohol, they will remain on the skin and irritate the protective oil layer as the hand gets wet from sweat, and leave residue of soap and dead skin on clothing or bag handles. The sanitizer may kill living organisms, but doesn’t remove all grime that prompted you to clean the hands in the first place, even if you wipe it with a tissue.
I don’t believe this has been mentioned yet, but one of the most important parts about this – alcohol does not kill all germs. Prime example – norovirus (the virus that causes stomach flu) – alcohol will do nothing to it due to its capsid. The only real product out there that’s going to kill it is bleach (and only certain types of bleach at that). The thing about washing your hands, is the scrubbing action is removing particles from your hands themselves, whereas hand sanitizer is relying on alcohol’s ability to kill germs; unfortunately alcohol is ineffective against many pathogens. So in the norovirus example, washing your hands will remove norovirus particles from your hands, whereas rubbing alcohol will be completely ineffective in protecting you from it. hand sanitizer is better than nothing of course, but always rely on hand washing where you can.
If you have poop on your hands and you rub your hands with hand sanitizer… you still have poop on your hands. If you wash your hands with soap and water, you remove the poop from your hands and the poop germs.
Not only does washing hands with soap get rid of the dead bacteria but it also cleans your hands of grease and dirt which can prevent hand sanitizer from working, so hand sanitizer is only ideal if hands are unsoiled
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