Hand Sanitizers: Do They Work?

You're on a long car trip with no rest area in sight. The baby's diaper had to be changed and now your hands feel icky. What do you do?

Reach for the hand sanitizer.

In this sort of situation, hand sanitizer is ideal.

It is always best to wash your hands with soap and water, of course. But, in reality, that is not always an immediate option.

Hand sanitizer works by removing the surface layer of oil from your skin. This prevents bacteria from settling in and making you sick if your hands inadvertently make it to your mouth.

It is important to shop around a bit and find a sanitizer with a 60-95% concentration of alcohol. Anything less than 60% and the product acts as a distributor of bacteria rather than an eradicator.

You have to read the fine print on the bottle. Most are packaged in pretty much the same way and make the same claims. Be sure that the bottle you're buying has at least 60% alcohol concentration.

Scott Reynolds, an infection control specialist at the James H. Quillen Veterans Affair Medical Center in Mountain Home, Tennessee discovered the importance of alcohol concentration in hand sanitizers during an exercise with his friend's biology class.

Mr. Reynolds was invited to teach the importance of hand washing and sanitizing. After doing some experiments, he learned that those who used a product with less than 60% alcohol actually spread the bacteria around their hands. The oil was not removed and now covered a larger surface of their hands.

If you are careful in selecting a sanitizer with a higher concentration of alcohol, you can help prevent illnesses that might be transmitted by touch.

If you work in a public place where you are touching door knobs and keyboards that everyone has in common, using a hand sanitizer can be a good practice in between hand washings.

It's also good to use in the home, particularly if someone is sick. You can help stop it from spreading through the rest of the family as child after child touches the remote control or video game controller.

A dime-size puddle of sanitizer rubbed for 30 seconds on the hands should be all that's needed. Of course, this could depend on the size of the hands. If your hands are dry within 10-15 seconds of applying it, you probably didn't use enough.

Hand sanitizer does not replace hand washing.

Dirt and soil on the hands can make the sanitizer less effective.

Hand washing removes the bacteria and the actual soil. Hand sanitizer does not.

However, in situations where hand washing is not immediately available, hand sanitizer can be a healthy alternative.