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
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.
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