I heard on TV today that toilet seats are relatively germ-free because they are cold and dry, whereas, germs like warm and wet atmospheres. This got me to thinking… when we wash our hands most of us use warm (not hot) water. Is warm water, as opposed to scalding hot water, really more effective than cold water? Following the “warm+wet= germs” logic, shouldn’t we wash with cold water?
I understand that hot water kills germs, but the recommended temps for, say, washing dishes are much higher than your average person would use to wash their hands.
I am ready to believe that warm water is better than cold, since everyone says it is-- I’d just like to have it explained to me. In a related question, in those public restrooms with no hot water, am I just wasting my time washing with cold water and soap?
Aren’t warm water and soap meant to just remove a layer of skin-oils and the attached dust/dirt that might act as as feeding medium for germs? So, it’s not about killing germs, but about removing the food that might increase their numbers to an unhealthy level.
I’ve read that:
A it is impossible to kill all dermal flora for more than a few minutes at most and
B even if one could kill all the normal benevolent human dermal flora, that wouldn’t be healthy at all.
The teperature of the water is fairly irrelevant, it just rinses off hte dirt caught up by the soap. The most important thing is to wash your hands properly, not missing any spots, rinsing and repeating several times.
A surgical scrub lasts about 5 minutes and uses powerful antiseptics, and even that won’t remove all germs, it just makes your hands “acceptably dirty”.
Washing is just washing, nothing more. It loosens and removes bad things from your hands and washes them down the drain. Warm water isn’t hot enough for heat sterilization and soap isn’t a strong disinfectant.
The advantage of warm water is that it speeds the process of dissolving the soap, emulsifying the oils, and quickly rinsing everything off. Soap reduces the surface tension of water, making it “wetter”, so that the water can enter all the grooves and ridges of your skin to remove the bacteria. That’s the real reason soap is so important to hand-washing.
If you use cold water instead of warm, it takes a bit more time and rubbing to get the same degree of cleansing.
Using cold water to wash ones hands can chapping and cracks, putting you more at risk than if you didn’t wash. An open wound is much harder to keep clean than intact skin.
Unless you are wetting your hands, not using soap, not drying them, then leaving them in your armpits, your hands won’t be petrie dishes. A warm environment means between 96?F to 104?F The surface temp of ones hands is much lower than that.
Washing doesn’t remove your germs. It removes those you may have picked up through out the day. It removes * other people’s germs.
Your normal skin flora isn’t just crawling around on top of your skin waiting to flushed down the drain. Your pet germs live between the top most skin cells.
We are, in fact, pretty well designed. We don’t get infections all that easily, as long as we use basic common sense. Don’t shake hands with the guy who just sneezed into his. Don’t lick the tile in public bathrooms. Wash your hands before andafter* handling raw meat, and of course, with each trip to the bathroom… Do it even if no one is watching.
Germs do indeed, live on smooth dry surfaces, they don’t, however multiply there.
That’s why the new faucets turn themselves off automatically. Do not touch thr faucet again with wet hands, dry them first and use the used towel to turn faucet off if need be.
That may be a benefit, but that’s not the reason most public restrooms have this sort of faucet in them. The faucets turn off automatically to discourage morons who think it’s a hoot to plug up the drain and leave the water running.
She had this spray in her desk and she made it clear no one was to touch her phone. Of course, sometimes she would be away from her desk and we would have to answer it. She would spray the thing almost every morning.
The rest of us in the office would joke about it and we would often tell her we had touched her phone even when we hadn’t, especially after she had later touched it.
It was great fun watching a grown woman go into a tissy.
I’ve had to deal with this issue professionally in the food service industry. The local health department rules are all employees MUST was their hands with soap and water after going to the restroom. Temperature of the water doesn’t matter. However, if there isn’t soap at the hand washing station, a health department inspector would start kicking ass and issue critical violations.
I would guess the temperature of the water is irrelevant, as temperature that would kill germs would burn human hands. In the food service biz, we dealt with this by using quaternary ammonium salts of chlorine. The temperature didn’t matter, as the chlorine would kill the germs. Given I’ve had to deal face to face following heath department inspectors, that chlorinated water was OK with them I consider significant.
We have these “germbusters” signs in our bathrooms at work that say you should wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. I would imagine that the longer you wash your hands, the less germs. I’ve never seen anyone actually wash their hands for 20 seconds, but some washing is obviously better than none at all.
Isn’t all the handwashing in vain, if, after washing hands, your hands close the faucet, turn off the lightswitch and touch the doorhandle? That faucet and doorknob have been touched by others who just used the toilet, so with hands full of germs.
Of course not. Your hands accumulate sweat and oils that feed bacteria and allow them to stick to your skin. Washing them off reduces the germ load. The handles in the bathroom are impervious and hopefully dry; they don’t allow germ colonies to multiply. As has already been pointed out, you can’t get the bacteria off your skin. You just reduce their number. And every surface is covered in germs - not just ones in the bathroom. In fact, not particularly surfaces in the bathroom. You’re not instantly contaminated as soon as you touch anything; hell, you’re contaminated before that, as germs in the air are going to settle on your hands as soon as you’re finished washing them.
Christ, the level of superstition people attach to handwashing is unreal . . .
Sorry, no. What you’re talking about is a class of compounds which includes the popular bacteriocide benzalkonium chloride. As the name indicates, it contains a chloride ion, which is not elemental chlorine, and which therefore has no germ-killing ability. That work is done by the quaternary ammonium ions.
Zephrin or benzalkonium chloride hasn’t been used, at least in the hospital setting since theearly '70s when it was discovered that not only did it have little value as a bacteriocide, it actually supported the growth of pseudomonas.
A considerable exaggeration; BAC enjoys a thriving business in disinfectant solutions and wipes, and as a preservative in pharmaceuticals. It’s true that there’s better out there, but it’s also true that only some strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa are resistant. Also, BAC’s use in the hospital setting is sort of irrelevant to my point, which is that it’s the benzalkonium, not the chloride, that kills the bugs (and it kills plenty well, most of the time). Me, I’m a fan of ethanol gels like Germ-X – and so are hospitals.