Hand sanitizer only last for two minutes, not effective at killing germs long-term
And we have these things up all over the campus.
A Personal Blog
by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
My Publications | e-mail
All opinions on this blog are those of the author(s) and not their employer(s) unelss otherwise specified.
Who Reads Discourse.net?
Readers describe themselves.
Please join in.Reader Map
Recent Comments
- Brooks Fudenberg on I Voted
- Jermaine Chad Ingram on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
- C.E. Petit on I Voted
- Jane Moscowitz on I Voted
- Ally Figueroa on Some Thoughts about the Downballot (Voters’ Guide Part II: Judicial Retention Elections)
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 52 other subscribers
This shouldn’t surprise, should it? Most mostly work via alcohol, killing bacteria by breaking cell walls, and removing viruses via rapid evaporation (as alcohol does), but once it’s gone, it can’t do anything else, and you really don’t want a bunch of alcohol on your skin for a long period, as your skin will dry out soon, too. Given the way this stuff works, this is just what people should expect.
If you rode the subway here in NYC regularly and had spent several minutes holding a pole, then sat down on a bench, you’d be grateful for the hand sanitizer – not withstand its ephemeral nature.
But they still use them in hospitals don’t they, so I assume they are actually effective to some degree.
so I assume they are actually effective to some degree.
They are- if you don’t have a really cheap one, and you use the right amount in the right way, they kill (or remove via evaporation) the germs that are on your hands right now. What they don’t do is keep new germs from coming along later, but then, there was no rational reason to think they (or anything else) would.
I just thought they were a way to quickly wash one’s hands without having a sink and soap handy. When I wash my hands, I assume that they are clean until I touch something dirty. Why should it be any different with an alcohol based hand cleaner?
Surely no one thought that these things would imbue one’s hands with the magical power to kill germs for some period of time. That’s just ridiculous. How could anyone get that impression?