Check your hand sanitizer
 

I don't leave home without hand sanitizer and certainly carry it while traveling.

According to a NY Times article, some brands do not have enough alcohol (min 60%) and may even mobilize the bacteria and spread them around your hands.

I just checked the little bottle of Purell in my purse and it says 62% alcohol. According to the article, some brands have as little as 30%.

http://tinyurl.com/ppv6d

I trust you understand that no germs can penetrate truly intact skin but if using hand sanitizer makes you feel more comfortable go ahead and use it.

And you could be contributing to greater disease by helping organisms become resistant to antibiotics.

You are missing the point. This has nothing to do with intact skin or paranoia about germs.

My number one choice would be to wash my hands prior to meals. This is not always an option. I can give you many examples including hiking trips, public places where there's no soap or running water for washing hands, Great Wall of China and so on.

I don't believe in hand sanitizer. I went through my whole childhood without it and am alive and well.

Hand sanitizer makes me feel icky. It's dry jel feeling makes my number one priority to find a place to wash my hands. Putting on hand sanitizer wouldn't make me feel any more comefortable about doing something. 30% or 60% or 100% wouldn't make a bit of differance to me...I'm with la claire what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Thank you for the info, esm. :)

Hand sanitizers are one of the great scams of all time. Not only are they helping create more restistant strains, but they make the user (particularly children) more susceptible to germs by reducing your body's exposure to them, lessening your own antibodies' ability to fight them.

esm - it's a tough crowd this morning. LOL
Thanks for the information.

As a person who has had to deal with disease transmission in an institutional setting, I feel compelled to point out that there is a vast difference between antimicrobial soaps (the ones which may or may not be contributing to resistant bacteria) and alcohol-based sanitizers.

Alcohol, heat, and soap and water are traditional methods of sanitation that have been proven effective over decades of use.

To echo ESM's advice, the amount of the hand gel, the percentage of alcohol in the gel you use and the time the gel is left on the hand all play a part in its effectiveness. Similarly, rinsing one's hands in water removes many bacteria and viruses; scrubbing them for 30 seconds with plain old soap, though, is amazingly much more effective.

If one is around someone with a hampered immune system, one may want to adopt frequent soap-and-water washing followed by a hefty dose of alcohol-based gel sanitizer.

In addition, the problem of bacteria on the hands is not its penetration into skin but rather its transfer from person to person and to mucous membranes--nose, mouth and eyes--areas we all touch far more than we realize. Your mom's advice to wash your hands frequently and keep your hands away from your face still rings true.

As people in the hospital industry most recently found, simple logic could have indicated the means by which so many hospital infections were spreading: the doctor's tie. The logic is so plain once one sees it: the tie is rarely washed and is constantly adjusted with the hands.

Using that common sense, re-think handrails, elevator buttons, doorknobs, and that tray on your airline seat.

Wishing you all good health,

Charles

wow-
you tell 'em charles!

esm, as a nurse, i am very conscious of spreading infection, however i feel that americans have become overzealous on this issue. years of working in a hospital and having to wash my hands with antibacterial soap between each patient, whether i touched them or not, has caused a hypersensitivity reaction in my hands. there should be natural flora on your skin that the hand sanitizer probably kills. may i recommend instead a gentle baby wipe to carry around instead? my DH, a physician, always reminds me that the children that were not allowed to play in the dirt were the ones that used to get polio because their resistence was lower.

Two MD friends who are world travelers swear by it. We can overdo the germ thing, but after using primitive restroom facilities I'd far rather use it than not.

Well, as a nurse, who washes her hands a lot, we use hand sanitizers all the time. I am going to Thailand and will take liquid sanitizers, not to just wash my hands, but to wash fruit before peeling, and to wipe off the lids of bottled water before opening. Soap and water would be just as good, but I won`t have access to it. I think it depends on where you are going. Ships now have hand sanitizer stations everywhere, because of the norwalk virus. It isn`t necesarily about intact skin, but hand to mouth transmission. We are talking about alcohol content., not anitibiotics.

Wow, I've seen plenty of hot-button subjects here but I didn't expect hand sanitizer to be one of them!

I fail to see the relevance of "having survived childhood without sanitizers" and "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" logic. Are you suggesting that one shouldn't clean hands after a rest stop? I don't think dysentery will make anyone stronger.

I'm not advocating sanitizers, just sharing information!

Sounds like some people have forgotten the essentials of polio. In the days before vaccination, <i>everyone</i> got polio, almost&mdash;it's extremely contagious. However, about 95% of the people who get it never have any symptoms.

Anyway, the Centers for Disease Control seem to think that hand sanitizers are a pretty good idea, despite the urban legends that they are not. Why are people so resistant to hygiene?

Soap and water are excellent, also, but when you're travelling and soap and water are not available, hand sanitizer is far better than nothing, and it's much better than plain water. Sanitizer plus soap plus water is pretty good, too.

A lot of infectious disease is transmitted via the hands. Keeping them clean and controlling germs can keep one healthier. And catching something on a trip abroad is no fun.

With a fairly limited understanding of mircorganisms but with 20 years in the health industry I haven't heard of a bacterial or viral strain building an increased immunity to alcohol because of repeated exposure to it.

I can't find a link to it now but I saw a newsclip on a study that basically said rubbing the hands vigorously together with any sort of viscous material (soap, alcohol, water etc) for 15-20 seconds was just almost as effective as a 30 second handwashing.

Either way, I can say with confidence that the potential risks of not washing your hands greatly outweigh the risks of overwashing them.

How does an alcohol-based sanitizer make germs more resistant to antibiotics?

Although I also find that Purell leaves my hands feeling a little slimy, getting germs off of my hands before I inadvertently touch my face or my food seems like a very good idea where hot running water and soap are unavailable. The NYT article that esm references mentions several medical studies that found use of hand sanitizers cut the spread of intestinal diseases even when used on hands that were not visibly dirty.

I think that some of the posters are confusing alcohol sanitizers with triclosan-based antibacterial products.

I would still use 30% one, I would drink twice more for the same effect!

Ok, maybe I'm a sucker for wasting money on hand sanitizers, but I'll admit that I do buy alcohol wipes and use them all the time.

When traveling, I'll wipe down my airplane seat's arm console and those buttons to control seat pitch, sound, lightin, etc. I'll also wipe the handles of the lavatory sink before I use it.

Does it work? Maybe not, I have no way of knowing. But I'm not hurting anyone (I don't believe alcohol causes germs to become resistant to antibiotics), and it makes me feel better. Maybe just the psychological boost helps keep me from getting sick.