{"id":143,"date":"2017-03-10T13:43:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T18:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=143"},"modified":"2017-04-03T13:53:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T17:53:32","slug":"q-is-hand-sanitizer-bad-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/q-is-hand-sanitizer-bad-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Q: Is Hand Sanitizer Bad For You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-423 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-149x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"149\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-149x300.png 149w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-768x1544.png 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-509x1024.png 509w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-560x1126.png 560w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-280x563.png 280w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-320x644.png 320w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-640x1287.png 640w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-828x1665.png 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-360x724.png 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-9x18.png 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 149px) 100vw, 149px\" \/>In the late 1600s, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch textile merchant whose hobbies included handcrafting microscopes, scraped some plaque off his teeth, mixed it with rainwater, and put it under his lens. He saw something curious\u2014\u201cmany very small living animals, which moved very prettily,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the Royal Society of London.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header>Is Sanitizer As Good As Washing Your Hands?<\/header>\n<p>\u201cHand sanitizer just does what it says\u2014it sanitizes your hands, but it doesn\u2019t clean your hands,\u201d says Mack. If you have filth on your hands, the sanitizer doesn\u2019t get to the bacteria underneath the dirty surface. You\u2019re just sanitizing the top of the filth.\u201d Additionally, soap and water are more effective than hand sanitizer at removing or inactivating certain kinds of germs, such as norovirus and <em>Clostridium difficile<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>His discovery of what we know as bacteria was a breakthrough in microbiology. When later experiments revealed those little \u201canimals\u201d can cause disease and illness, people were encouraged to wash their hands using soap to remove bacteria and prevent infection.<\/p>\n<p>Today, many instead reach for hand sanitizer. But is its frequent use good for you, or can it have harmful side effects?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHand sanitizers are really good if they\u2019re alcohol-based, and the alcohol content must be at least 60 percent and up to 95 percent,\u201d says James P. Mack, a biology professor who has researched the efficacy of essential oils from plants, and the organic compound methylglyoxal from Makuna Honey,\u00a0 as agents against several multidrug-resistant bacteria. Brands with these higher alcohol concentrations \u201ckill most of the germs and bacteria that we accumulate by touching things all the time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns hand sanitizer with an alcohol concentration below 60 percent and non-alcohol-based sanitizers aren\u2019t nearly as effective. The latter, whose active ingredient is triclosan, only reduces the growth of germs\u2014it doesn\u2019t kill them. Additionally, it may not work equally well for all classes of germs and is more likely to irritate the skin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of antibacterial soaps and washes had triclosan, but there really wasn\u2019t any convincing evidence that these products had a benefit as an antibacterial agent,\u201d says Mack. That, as well as data suggesting that long-term exposure to those products could pose health risks due to bacterial resistance to triclosan, prompted the Food and Drug Administration to ban the marketing of antibacterial wash products containing the ingredient last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you used those, you could have exposed yourself to bacteria that could give you an infection,\u201d says Mack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biology Professor James Mack comes clean about the effectiveness of hand sanitizers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":42,\"y\":0}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"149\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-149x300.png\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-423 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:42% 0%\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-149x300.png 149w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-768x1544.png 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-509x1024.png 509w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-560x1126.png 560w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-280x563.png 280w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-320x644.png 320w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-640x1287.png 640w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-828x1665.png 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-360x724.png 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz-9x18.png 9w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/03\/spritz.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 149px) 100vw, 149px\" \/>","catString":"Currents","issue":"Spring 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}