Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW answers 4 year old Claire. I expect many of us complained about being told to "wash your hands: when we were children. Now we are learning why keeping our hands clean may be a matter of life and death for us and that old fashioned soap is better than liquid hand washes and gels.
"We don’t know if bad germs are on our hands because you can’t see them. The best and easiest way to remove bad germs is washing them away with soap.
It’s a good idea to wash your hands after you go to the toilet, after you blow your nose, before you help prepare food and before you eat. Otherwise, when you touch your mouth, nose or eyes you might accidentally get a bad germ from your hands into your body – where it can make you very sick. "
Have kids do the bread experiment. One slice in a baggie before they have been outside playing or whatever, and another slice after a thorough hand washing. We would label the baggies with students' names, then tape then up on the closet doors. With slightly older kids, the message is very obvious, and pretty disgusting.
Thinking, with the debates over hand gels and wipes vs soap and water, that it would be interesting to add one or both into the bread experiment for older kids. Does anyone have a child who needs a science fair project?
My favorite, so far, was a local little girl who documented that their dogs mouth had fewer germs than her little brother's.
Very interesting. I prefer handsoap over the gels anyway, so it is a win-win for me. Several years ago I read an article on use of antibacterial soap versus water. Test conclusion was that just the rubbing of your hands in water worked as well as washing hands with antibacterial soap. They used same time to wash of 20 seconds. Bottom line is washing hands does help.
If anyone's kids use this idea please post about it, maybe in a closed post about soap vs gels, vs dirty hands. It would be interesting to see the results, and might give the kids a chance to compare their results internationally.
There was a recent UK television program about the advantages and disadvantages of washing hands with soap and water, versus using gels.
From the programs webpage.
‘Next it's a focus on hand hygiene. In recent years, there's been a growing trend to replace traditional soap and water with alcohol gels. If you're a surgeon or a chef, alco-gels are the right thing to use but research suggests the rest of us should stick with soap and water. Half of our twins spend four days washing their hands with soap, while the other half use alcogels. The bacteria from their hands is taken to the lab and bacterial colonies allowed to grow. Which regime will win out?’
Their conclusion for this brief test was that soap and water was best, as it removed the vast majority of any germs and bacteria.
Alcohol gels however very selectively killed some germs and bacteria, but left others to grow ever bigger.
Thus they commented that the alcohol gels could encourage a resistance to these gels and begin a cycle of bacteria resistance. Of course this becomes similar to the present worries about antibiotic resistance.
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