Please Wash Your Hands!

Do you wash your hands as often as you should? And how often is that, anyway?

Hand washing is the act of cleansing the hands, with or without water. Hand washing removes visible dirt and substances as well as things that you can’t see – namely, pathogens such as bacteria and viruses that can spread disease. Many respiratory infections, gastrointestinal illnesses, and skin infections are acquired when hands that are contaminated by pathogens touch your nose, mouth, or eyes.

A study in the journal Lancet by U.S. and Pakistani public health experts showed that diarrhea and respiratory tract infections kill 3.5 million children younger than 5 years old each year. Hand washing with soap can cut this number in half and can lower the incidence of impetigo, a contagious skin infection, by one-third!

When should you wash your hands?

Hand washing should always be done before:

• Food preparation and eating
• Handling contact lenses
• Touching/caring for a person who is ill or has open wounds

Hand washing should always be done after:

• Food preparation (especially raw meat, poultry)
• Using the bathroom
• Changing diapers
• Touching animals/animal waste, animal toys
• Blowing one’s nose or coughing, sneezing into one’s hands
• Treating wounds
• Touching an ill person
• Handling trash or other soiled items

What constitutes correct and adequate hand washing?

Do I need to use soap? Do I need to use antibacterial soap? What about liquid vs. bar soaps? Should the water be hot? What if I don’t have access to a sink, running water, and soap? These are all very good questions.

Water alone is not sufficient to clean hands because water does not effectively remove the fats, oils, and proteins that harbor pathogens that spread infection. To remove pathogens with water alone, you would need two gallons of running water per minute. Not even hot water is hot enough to kill bacteria alone. The addition of soap to running water (preferably warm) helps to lift these fats/oils/proteins from hands so that pathogens can be washed away in the lather produced.

When it comes to the question of liquid vs. bar soaps, aside from being messy and gunking up the side of the sink, bar soaps are perfectly fine to use. Although bacteria may persist on bar soaps, these organisms are actually washed away with the lather, so there is virtually no risk of transferring bacteria from one person to another.

Contrary to popular belief, antibacterial soaps are NOT more effective than regular soaps at removing pathogens. In fact, the antibacterial agent in many of these products is Triclosan, to which many organisms have already developed resistance. Furthermore, there is growing concern that the widespread use of these antibacterials may help to select out increasingly resistant organisms, thus adding to the global problem of drug-resistant infections. Bottom line, regular soap is just fine.

When it comes to the actual act of hand washing, correct technique is important. The correct hand washing process includes wetting the hands with running water, applying soap, lathering well, rubbing hands vigorously for at least 20 seconds, rinsing well, and drying with a clean or disposable towel. If you really want to do it right, use the towel to turn off the tap so as not to contaminate your clean hand.

There is ongoing debate about whether hand dryers actually spread bacteria and infection! The jury is still out on this. However, it is true that the filters under dryers do not get cleaned regularly, and they look pretty filthy. Therefore, when you have a choice, go for the paper towels, or consider air drying!

If you are out and about and don’t have access to a sink, running water, and soap, then hand sanitizers are an excellent option. However, they are not appropriate for use when your hands are visibly soiled. Hand sanitizers are waterless agents, mostly with either an isopropyl alcohol or ethanol base. Importantly, to be effective in killing germs, hand sanitizers must have at least 60-95% alcohol content. In addition to either a thickening agent to form a gel or glycerin to form a liquid or foam, they may also contain emollients (skin softening agent) to minimize the drying effect of the alcohol. And unlike antibacterial soup, they do not promote bacterial resistance.

So, keep those hands clean and have a happy, healthy winter!