My question: Do alcohol-based hand sanitizers kill viruses?
My information is mixed. I’ll tell you what I know.
About 20 years ago I was talking to a pharmacist about antibacterial hand lotions. He said, in summary, only ‘iodine in solution’ kills viruses. But later on I was watching Prime Time Live (?) on ABC. They were doing a story on antibacterial hand lotion. And according to their tests, antibacterial hand lotion does kill the virus they used in their experiment. (FWIW they said the ‘rubbing motion’ had something to do with it, whatever that means.)
More recently I asked my now-retired family physician if it did. He said yes.
Also, I don’t know if this is relevant. But they do have hand sanitizers in places like nursing homes around flu season.
There. That is all I know. What do the rest of you think? Also I trust you can see why a doctor or person with a biological degree would be great at answering this question:).
I go to alot of clinics, hospitals and Pharmacys. I see GermX at all of them. I buy it by the case at SamsClub (I’m phobic, don’t let this info disturb you).
If it doesn’t work I’ve wasted approximately 2.5 years of my life, buying, looking for it, using it.
I certainly hope it kills viruses and other plague germs.(I have grandkids)
:eek:
They use bleach cleaner at my infusion center. I can smell it. I asked the PA why hand sanitizers weren’t made with bleach. She laughed at me.
I don’t trust the Purell brand. It doesn’t have as much alcohol, from the smell of it. I’ve not read any tests or cites. I trust my nose.
My opinion only.
The last article I read on the matter said you should always opt for washing your hands when you have a choice. But hand sanitizer is better than not doing anything at all.
Here’s my theory: Washing your hands with water and soap is best because the water and soap will lift particles (bacteria, and maybe viruses?) and they will get mixed with the water and soap (especially if it’s sudsy). They when you rinse, it all gets rinsed off and goes down the drain, dead or alive.
Same with washing dishes or laundry.
The key is getting it rinsed off and down the drain. Once there, I don’t care if those germs are dead or alive.
A CDC pdf with more information on it than you could ever want. The relevant bits below but in general yes they do.
The standard guideline in a healthcare setting is soap and water if visibly dirty and otherwise a 60 to 95% alcohol based hand sanitizer. Aim for 20 seconds and getting all surfaces.
The real issue is how effective is any type of hand sanitizing method in preventing spread of the flu. This in turn depends on what current research shows as the method by which the flu is spread.
It’s not that hand sanitizing (washing, alcohol, etc) is useless, but I think some research indicates the flu may spread by microscopic aerosolized particles exhaled from infected individuals. IOW even if the person doesn’t sneeze on you and doesn’t have direct or indirect physical contact, just walking through the air they exhale may put you at risk.
I think some of this research comes from cases where a group of people from different places were in a confined space - say on an airplane, many had no physical or proximity contact with infected individuals on the plane, yet most of the got the flu and it was traced back to that event.
It’s hard to believe in this day and age the relative contribution of each transmission mode of the flu is not fully understood. Although virus-based, the relative transmission modes are apparently different from the common cold. IOW it appears hand sanitizing and avoiding physical or indirect contact helps greatly for the common cold. It may not help as much for the flu.
Things I’ve read about avoiding the common cold include that hand contact followed by rubbing the eyes is a very common mechanism, and that isopropyl alcohol is very effective on the cold virus (though not necessarily all viruses and bacteria). As a chronic pulmonary patient at high risk, this is the real issue for me. I keep isopropanol around in squeeze containers like you’d use for ketchup, and in little prepackaged swabs (the Becton-Dickenson brand is best, having a thick sturdy absorbent felt well saturated in a handy foil envelope).
Yes, that’s probably killing off a lot of germs.
The weak ones.
Leaving behind all the stronger, more resistant germs. To breed a new generation of germs (every hour or two) that are even more resistant to mild antibiotics like hand sanitizers.
So is that really helping? Or is it just making sure that the germs in your vicinity are the strong, healthy ones that can resist sanitizers?
Read about drug-resistant germs if you want to be really scared.
There’s a big difference between resistance to antibiotics and a resistance to antiseptics/germicides. The former is to be feared, for certain. Those wonderful magic bullets that are antibiotics can go inside our body and kill the bacteria but leave our cells intact, and need to be used judiciously as to not bring about resistance.
But topical antiseptics don’t induce much resistance. Antiseptics/germicides are the microbial equivalent of flamethrowers or poison gas. Tough to develop resistance to, and if taken internally they also tend to be toxic to the body in general.
So please don’t equate the two different approaches.
