It’s nice though to clean your hands off if they get sticky (candy, for example) and you can’t get to a sink at the moment.
guizot – no, OCD is an actual disorder. It’s not just little quirks. (Although nowadays mine tends to manifest itself that way – like I’ll arrange my M&Ms by color, for example. 
This is completely untrue, just FYI.
I seriously don’t see cleaning doorknobs as being especially freakish. I clean doorknobs and my desk phone at the office when I know someone is sick and occasionally when no one is. I sit by the bathroom and know for an absolute fact who does and does not wash their hands. I also know who sneezes and coughs onto their hands instead of their elbow.
Just because germs are good doesn’t mean I want to catch everything that’s going around. I still manage to catch a couple of immune boosting colds each year in spite of this.
At home I wash the doorknobs when I’m dusting and the bathroom ones when I’m cleaning the bathrooms.
Hand sanitizers are much better at killing germs than soap and water. Buy a brand that’s at least 60% alcohol.
I don’t use the stuff but that’s what I’ve read.
The CDC disagrees with the first thing you said - proper hand washing is certainly the better of the two options. I’ve also heard that hand washing is superior quite specifically by those in the medical and food service communities (when doing some market research regarding hand hygiene). Of course, you certainly don’t need to take my word for it, http://www.cdc.gov/cleanhands/
If I remember in the morning I’ll try to find something with more specifics.
Hand washing my be superior, but if you’ve ever been to a hospital (at least in my parts) they have alcohol based cleansers everywhere. So the medical community doesn’t think they are useless.
ETA: I should add that it’s not just for the sake of the patients – the nurses and doctors use them routinely without thinking (this is just my observation).
I would much prefer a surficant and water to get my hands clean instead of smearing the dirt around with essentially hand lotion. I dislike being dirty, not to the point of phobia, but I carry screen wipes [essentially alcohol baby wipes] because at least the dirt smears can be wiped off the hands instead of rubbed in. I dont like the sticky feel of regular baby wipes.
I was always raised [born in 1961] to wash my hands fairly frequently, after using the bathroom, if I have an illness, before during and after handling raw food, after being out playing … and had more exposure to playing outside than a lot of kids get today and while I do have a fair number of allergies, other than the ones that are anaphylaxis serious, or projectile puking serious [both are food allergies] mine do not cripple me like so many kids today seem to have.
There’s a conceptual problem with this thread and it’s this: Germophobes (whatever those happen to be) aren’t very likely to self-iidentify (I know a few have here, but I think they’re a minority).
People just aren’t likely to consider their own hygiene regime OTT. Nobody carries on doing an unnecessarily large amount of any optional activity - they either don’t accept/realise that it’s unnecessary, or they cut back if/when they do.
Oddly, the site I was thinking of was also quoting the CDC, at least in part (although the bit below, which is where I got the sanitizers kill more germs idea, doesn’t have a source listed):
“The most common agents for hand hygiene are alcohol-based handrubs (70% isopropanol), antimicrobal soap (4% chlorhexidine) and plain soap. With the first agent, the bacterial reduction is usually 99%, with the second about 90%. The two most common techniques are handrubbing and handwashing.”
Well, yes, if your hands are visibly dirty, you want to wash them. As I said earlier, I don’t use sanitizer. I also don’t don’t worry if the soap is antimicrobal. My wife assures me that that’s the kind she buys, though. I get a bit more enthusiastic about hand hygine during flu season, though, I’ll say that much.
What you said about playing outside as a child could be true. I haven’t tried looking it up online but I remember a lecture I heard where they said that things like asthma and allergies may be more common for children who’ve been denied the opportunity to have normal interactions with dirt and germs. However, you also said you have a lot of allergies? How many is “a fair number”, if that’s not too nosy a question?
Yeah, I clean the doorknobs when I wipe down the switchplates, or as-needed. If you have kids or a big family, stuff gets on them now and then. Ones near the kitchen seem to get especially food-y.
I have 3 food allergies, mushrooms to the point of anaphylaxis, palm products causes sever gastric distress and several hours contemplating my sins in the bathroom, bivalves cause projectile vomiting.
I pretty much ignore the allergies to pet fur, it gives me sniffles. I blow my nose. According to the allergist who used me for target practice when I was 12 [my doc made my mom take me after so many consecutive years of sinus and ear infections, or because he rolled the dice and decided I should get tested for allergies] I was allergic to dog, cat, rabbit, goat, horse dander, house dust, something he called industrial dust, ragweed, goldenrod, wool, and a whole passel of foods that I eat happily with no apparent ill effects. Oh, and also poison ivy, which I can smear on myself with impunity [but I don’t, as I don’t want to sensitize myself and tempt fate!] In all the time before and since, I have kept dogs and cats, rode horses competitively, worn wool [i love my sweaters, than you very much] wander outside in blooming season, and eat what doesnt make me sick or kill me.
Oddly enough, 2 plants he never mentioned give me the most trouble - forsythia and pine - when they pollenate at me, my sinuses block solid.
Well, it does seem that hand hygiene doesn’t do much to prevent you from getting colds and flu. This Slate articlesums up the research I saw from a quick Google. Studies do show that people who use hand sanitizer do have lower rates of gastrointestinal viruses though. It seems we tend to catch colds & flu through droplets in the air, rather than hand-to-face.
Especially given my incredibly dry skin, this makes me rethink my frequency of using sanitizer. But I also really hate getting a stomach virus, so I’ll keep some on hand, I’m sure.
Oh, absolutely, no question. They can’t be beat for convenience and speed, and are certainly effective - they just aren’t superior to a thorough hand wash. You’d be surprised, though, how many doctors fail to follow hand hygiene rules, even when using hand sanitizer is acceptable for many situations.
would put you on the Golgafrinchan arkship “B”
A rather hilarious piece of trivia: during the latest H1N1 scare, every friggin’ drugstore, grocery store or gas station around here had a hand sanitizer product called “antibac” on prominent display. Uh, guys, H1N1 ain’t no bacterium, it’s a virus :dubious: And those little f*kcers (i.e. viruses) are pretty damned hard to “kill”…
Hand-washing is superior to sanitizing gels if it is done properly. Most people don’t wash their hands properly. It should take at least 60 seconds of vigorous scrubbing.
Sanitizing gels aren’t as good, but they are quick and easy. And they will help.
FTR, I work in a medical environment (hospital/medical school) and wall-mounted alcohol-based sanitizing gel dispensers are ubiquitous here. I use them probably 20 times a day, since I can just grab some as I pass it without even slowing down. The en masse effect is probably substantial.
Reading this, I was reminded of Ralph Leighton’s book Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey. Traveling by train through the Soviet Union to reach Tuva,everyone in the group drank tea:
But later on in the book, he said:
I can’t find the link I was thinking of, but the gist of it was that autoimmune disorders are related to the body’s immune system attacking harmless things like pollen. I did find this link about treating MS with a parasite, Helminth ova.
Seriously, I hardly ever get colds since I started working at a public library 5 years ago. I give the newspaper out to homeless guys all day and my immune system will kick your immune system’s ass. If you shook my hand my white blood cells would hop over to your body and give you an autoimmune disorder just because they can’t help themselves. They’d find you a weaker lifeform and wage total war.
But I can name several specific bacteria that are transmitted from certain raw foods. And I take those precautions only with foods I know transmit bacteria like salmonella.
Those of you who wouldn’t touch a shopping cart handle, tell me, what diseases are transmitted that way, that aren’t also transmitted by anything else that other people touch?
Avoiding disease is all well and good, but you don’t want to go so far with it that other people you interact with feel that you are treating them like lepers. Not interacting with other humans would reduce the number of sicknesses you get, but it wouldn’t be worth it. I don’t think a lot of the other germophobe precautions are worth it, either.