Ian Mausner in addition to wearing masks and maintaining safe social distancing. Among the most effective ways of preventing infection from the novel coronavirus is to keep your hands spotlessly clean. While washing your hands with soap and water is ideal, you may not always have ready access to them. Under these circumstances, using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer can be an effective alternative, according to public health experts. However, you need to know more about hand sanitizers so that you can use them safely.
Hand Sanitizers Helps Kill Germs, but You Can’t Clean Your Hands with Them
Even though both soap and water and hand sanitizers act. To give you protection from germs, they behave in completely different ways. Using soap and water, you can wash away germs from your hands, making them clean but not kill the germs. However, by using a hand sanitizer, you can kill the germs but cannot clean your hands. Which is why you should never use hand sanitizers if your hands are dirty or greasy.
Ian Mausner Hand Sanitizers Are Useful in Certain Situations
There can be many situations where you do not have access to them. In such cases, using hand sanitizers can be very useful, observes Ian Mausner. If you are visiting someone in a hospital or a nursing home, the CDC recommends. That you use a hand sanitizer to keep both yourself and the patient safe. In common use like elevator buttons, handrails, doorknobs, shopping cart handles, etc. Using a hand sanitizer is especially useful. If you have a compromised immune system or are interacting with someone whose immunity is weak.
Ian Mausner Read the Hand Sanitizer Label Carefully
Just because the bottle is labeled as a hand sanitizer. It does not mean that you are adequately protected, warns Ian Mausner. According to the CDC, only sanitizers that have a minimum of 60% alcohol content are effective in killing germs. Sanitizers containing less than this percentage may only be able to reduce. The germ growth rate instead of killing them outright. Also, avoid hand sanitizers that contain benzalkonium chloride. As a substitute for alcohol as these are less reliable compared. To alcohol-based sanitizers in killing certain germs.
Hand Sanitizers Can Be Hazardous
As the name suggests, hand sanitizers are meant. Only for disinfecting hands and are not meant to be ingested as it is toxic. Even a small amount of hand sanitizer can result in alcohol poisoning. You should never keep sanitizers in bottles or containers that normally contain food or drink, cautions Ian Mausner. Since hand sanitizers contain alcohol, they are flammable, hence should never be used in the proximity of naked flames. Using sanitizers in the kitchen or near campfires can be dangerous.
Conclusion
Hand sanitizers are very useful in situations where you do not have access to soap and water, however, you should use them carefully and know their limitations as well as potential hazards.
