It may be if you are trying to teach your two-year-old manners and are only able to extract a sheepish “Peeaz!” after he’s already stuffed his mouth full of chocolate cake. However, when it comes to preserving the health and well being of your child, most parents aim for the 100 percent mark.
I wouldn’t consider myself an all or nothing type mom, though my parent receptors were raised after reading Newsweek’s article on the effectiveness of hand sanitizers, and then seeing Purell listed on my daughter’s new school supply list.
According to the magazine’s crack research team, alcohol-based hand sanitizers don’t do much to prevent the spread of cold and flu germs. The main reason for the products’ failure is that not all gel-based sanitizers are created equal. For example, while one brand may feature 60 percent alcohol, another may only contain 30 percent. The latter makes it nearly ineffective when it comes to killing bacteria.
Newsweek’s study also found that high-quality products like Purrell, which contain more alcohol than most generic hand sanitizers, still pale in effectiveness when compared to plain ol’ soap and water.
That’s right; according to experts, if teachers really want to protect kids from germs they’ll skip the hand sanitizers and simply send students to the bathroom and have them wash their hands with soap and water.
As for the Centers for Disease Control guidelines that recommended the use of waterless sanitizers as a suitable alternative to hand washing, according to Newsweek, they were intended specifically for health care professionals, such as doctors and nurses, who wash their hands several times an hour. The frequency at which medical staff members scrub up creates a relatively clean surface for alcohol based gels to work on, thereby increasing their effectiveness. However, when you’ve got kids with questionable hygiene practices, rubbing their filthy paws on every surface in the classroom, then it’s a good bet that slathering Purrell on their hands is not going to get them squeaky clean.
Then again, are a few squirts of hand sanitizer better than nothing when you’re surrounded by walking petri dishes in a toxic wasteland?
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