A powerful weapon against germs is in the palm of our hands when we use soap and water correctly to wash our hands.
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An article by WebMD (March 6, 2020) reminds us that we can’t necessarily control what we touch or who else touches it but we can look after our own hands.
Correct handwashing hits germs on two fronts: physically removing germs and viruses from our hands and then it bursts open any outer coating the agent may have.
However, a 2013 study using trained observers watched 3,700 people wash their hands and found:
- 5% washed their hands correctly
- 1 in 4 did the ‘splash and dash.’
- 10% didn’t wash at all
- 5% spent more than 15 seconds washing, rubbing, and rinsing
Dr. Elizabeth Scott, Ph.D. who co-directs the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons University in Boston says that those efforts aren’t enough if we’re trying to keep from getting sick.
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Scrubbing our hands with soap is a vital step to good hand washing. The coronavirus, which has left 100,000 worldwide infected with COVID-19, – is encased in a lipid envelope — basically, a layer of fat. Soap breaks that fat apart and makes the virus unable to infect us. Together, friction, water, and soap can rinse these infective agents away.
We already know that washing our hands under running water for at least 20 seconds as we sing a cute song is a scientifically accepted process. So, adding friction and soap to the process gives us the triad that we need to help combat the COVID-19 virus.
We need to pay attention to places on your hands that we normally don’t consider.
- lower palms
- around our fingernails
- around our nail bed
- the back of our hands
Dr. Donald Schaffner, Ph.D. at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ who studies predictive food microbiology, hand-washing, and cross-contamination states that using paper towels is an effective tool beyond just simple hand washing because paper towels remove even more germs than just washing alone. Dry hands are also less likely to spread contamination than wet hands.
Here are some interesting statistics about contamination and cleanliness.
- 67% of public toilet users don’t wash their hands at all
- 6 seconds is the average time a person washes their hands after using a toilet
- 92% of phones are contaminated with bacteria such as staphylococci and E. coli.
- 100% reduction in bacteria after cleaning a keyboard with an antibacterial wipe
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Teaching people about handwashing helps them and their communities stay healthy. Handwashing education in the community reduces:
- the number of people who get sick with diarrhea by 23-40%
- diarrheal illness with weakened immune systems by 58%
- respiratory illnesses, like colds, in the general population by 16-21%
- absenteeism due to gastrointestinal illness in schoolchildren by 29-57%
“We touch a lot of different surfaces that hundreds of others might be touching,” according to Kelly Reynolds MSPH, Ph.D. a professor and environmental microbiologist and the University of Arizona. Germs spread quickly.
You Control the Soap.
