Hand sanitizer?

[Withywindle]

A very tangential tangent from a thread in GD...

[kentauros]

1. It's for people that don't realize

(or believe) just how resilient the human body is with regard to those dreaded germs

[Withywindle]

2. That's my take.

I've tried it once or twice but I don't like it. I can't stand the smell of it and it dries my skin out to a really uncomfortable degree. Feh. And I don't seem to get sick any more often than the people I've known who swear by it.

[kentauros]

4. If you're really "worried", the best thing to use would be

hydrogen peroxide. It's going to kill the bad germs, but not viruses. I don't think the sanitizers kill viruses, either...

[Withywindle]

6. I'm not worried at all.

Maybe I should be, but I'm just not. :shrug:

Tea tree oil is AWESOME for everything from minor cuts to healing new tattoos to zits to athlete's foot. But I wouldn't put it on my hands every day.

[kentauros]

7. Honey is good at healing wounds, too.

But not everyday on your hands, obviously :P

I didn't you were worried, either, just in general for those that would be worried about such things :)

[Withywindle]

8. Well, if everyone went around with honey on their hands all day

shaking hands would be a very different experience!


Maybe kind of cool for some people...:D

What if licking honey off people's hands became the default acceptable business greeting?

[kentauros]

17. !!

:rofl:

It reminds me of a time in my varied past when I worked as a pastry cook. At this one cafeteria, they head chef was helping me mix a large batch of chocolate cake batter. The beater was typically not getting all the way to the bottom, so you had to roll up you sleeves and basically 'dive' in with a pastry scraper in hand. I worked with another baker, the lead in my department, and when the head chef and I wanted some help from him, he said he didn't like to get his hands messy. We both just stared at him for a minute, wondering how anyone with a baking background could go through years of it without getting messy!

Of course, the "stickiest" time in that career was the time in pastry class when someone dropped a gallon jug of molasses on the floor :o

[Withywindle]

18. Whenever my mom baked a cake

I always insisted on licking the batter off the mixer bowl, and she always gave in. Well, kids don't get to do that these days. Raw egg in there, y'know---DEATH!!!!!1! (Think of that scene from the third Lord of the Rings movie, with all the Riders of Rohan yelling DEATH!!!!) Yeah, I licked it a lot, as every year when I was a kid Mom always made cakes on my birthday, her birthday, Dad's birthday, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas, and I always licked, and there was never any DEATH!!!2!!!


One of my favorite foods, honestly, is pickled eggs. My mom did her best to appease my taste, but she never managed to make any pickled eggs as good as the ones that had been sitting in truckstops for years.

wondering how anyone with a baking background could go through years of it without getting messy!

Ummm....you can't. Even basic cooking for yourself entails getting messy. So far I've never busted a whole jar of molasses all over my floor, but I'm humble enough to know that's only a matter of luck.

[kentauros]

19. The molasses upset was in a teaching bakery

so we had the large sizes, thus the gallon jug ;)

We also had some crazy cooks in there, like the one using the proofbox to make cherry mash :rofl:

You know, mayonnaise is made with raw eggs, too ;)
I used to help my father as a kid when he made Toll House and oatmeal cookies, also eating the raw cookie dough. Funny, I'm still alive... I think.

Can't say I'd like pickled eggs because I don't like most pickles to begin with, unless they're sweet and/or hot, like the pickled veggies served at Mexican places :9

[TZ]

32. Gee I work with a whole bunch of immunologists who seem to think

that hand sanitizers (WITH ALCOHOL-Thats what does it) work. But what do us scientists know about stuff like this...:sarcasm:
BTW, we have possible virological samples in our lab every day and Alcohol is what we use to decontaminate stuff. So your "opinion" about the usefulness of hand sanitizers is just that..an opinion without scientific merit.
I guess I'm just one of those close minded science types though. :banghead:

[Kali]

35. oh come on

don't you think that is a special situation?

I think the OP is referring to every day situations.

[kentauros]

36. You know, if you reread the OP you just "might" notice

that it's about everyday situations, not something specialized like a biology lab. I would expect you to sanitize yourself and everything else in such an environment out of protection to yourself, your co-workers and, most especially, your work, as you wouldn't want to be contaminating everything.

You work in a lab. I work in my kitchen and wash up with a little soap or peroxide and that's it. What more do I need? Unless you're now saying you've got mysophobia? ;)

[KT2000]

39. thanks for that

Costco sells an alcohol product - wet towels, foil wrapped. They are great and do not have fragrance and they do not have the antibacterial ingredients such as triclosan.
SIL took them with her to China and decided it was time to come home when they ran out!

[Kali]

3. other

soap and water

will use sanitizer in a few select situation (traveling and no water being the main one)

plain old bar soap

[Withywindle]

5. It can be useful for camping and stuff like that

which is how the fad got started, isn't it? I just think it's weird to carry it around EVERYWHERE in normal life, when there's plenty of soap and water around.

[MicaelS]

9. That thread pointed out just how many germophobes

We have in this society.

[Withywindle]

11. Yeah, it really did.

I'm not one, so I don't get it. It's on the increase, right, or does it just seem that way to me?

[MicaelS]

13. No, it's on the increase, and of course the

Companies that sell sanitizing products are short stroking to feed on the paranoia of people, especially mothers with babies and toddlers, every chance they get.

[Withywindle]

15. Somebody's gonna flame me for this, but I think it really hurts kids.

Good immune systems are made, not born. How can kids develop antibodies to anything if they're never exposed to anything that isn't completely fumigated while they're little.

When I was little, back in the Dark Ages of the early 70s, I spent most of my time running in the woods sitting under trees, digging in the dirt, running through cow pastures (and of course trying to avoid the piles of poop but not always succeeding) and rolling around with our dogs. Later on in life (circa 5th-6th grade) I took horseback riding lessons and spent time cleaning out the stables to help barter for it. OK, rural kid, it's understood--but when I went off to college it was near New York City, so I went straight from the hills to the subways and always ran my hands up the bannisters because my balance sucks and I always have to do that on stairs. (I live in Chicago now and still do.)

[kentauros]

20. Not gonna flame ya because I support that kind of life for kids.

Like too many of us here, I ate dirt as a kid. I don't remember much of that, so my parents have reminded me over the years ;)

But I did read fairly recently that some of the bacteria we need and/or use in our bodies comes from good soil. So, either let the kids eat it or at least play in it. Teaching many of them gardening at the same time would do wonders for them later on :)

[Withywindle]

21. Dirt-eating is just part of what kids DO.

All kids. All over the world. (But I am really glad I got vaccinated against polio--oh, look, another flame war waiting to happen.)

I also got recruited to work in my mom's vegetable garden during summer vacation. Now, I do still harbor a little bit of a grudge about this--my mom is brown, and from Brazil near the equator. I inherited my dad's extremely pale Irish skin tone, and comfort level with the British Isles type climate. I don't think she really ever understood just how PAINFUL it was for me to have the hot sun on my skin all day, and how easily I would burn and how susceptible I am to heat sickness. I could NOT just roll my sleeves up and pitch in and weed in the noonday sun like her siblings did.

I'm kind of glad I had that experience as a kid, though, because when people prevail upon me to go out to the beach or park in the summer, I know enough to know that that is NOT something that is pleasant or healthy for me.

[Arkansas Granny]

30. No flames from me. I taught my kids to wash their hands after using the

bathroom (although I'm sure they didn't always do so) and made sure they washed before they ate. However, in a days time, I'm sure they ingested a lot of dirt and other substances that would make some people shudder. We also went to the creek a lot to swim and they've swallowed a lot of creek water and we always had pets that they played with and shared food with. I grew up pretty much the same way with the additional exposure of farm animals and outdoor toilets.

Not all germs are bad or dangerous. You can be too clean with kids. I don't advise letting them play in feces or swim in stagnant water, but a little bit of dirt is not going to hurt the average, healthy child.

[TZ]

33. You are right about kids needing to get dirty.

Almost any immunologist will agree with you. In fact there is a theory floating around that the increase of kids with asthma and severe allergies is due to over protectiveness and not allowing the immune system to develop properly.
That said, while I do think that hand sanitizers and anti bacterial soaps are waaaaay over used. It large general public environments..like a large cube farm, I think having a hand sanitizer available (as they do here) is common sense. Its true that some of the biggest germ factories are publically used things like computer keyboards or phones...

[Name removed]

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[Withywindle]

12. Why?

I don't mean to grill you - just wondering what it's supposed to do that soap and hot water doesn't?

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

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[Withywindle]

16. The cooling thing I can understand.

Hell, I'm in Chicago and I'll take *almost* anything that feels cooling--except that I have dry skin, and anything that dries my skin out further to the point where it feels tight on my hands (as sanitizer does) is really unpleasant to me.

Good info about the cooking smells, though. I didn't know that.

[MiddleFingerMom]

22. I like to teabag sanitizer...

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You're right about the cooling tingling refreshing part of sanitizers...
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...and on a miserable, hot, humid, sticky day...
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...NOTHING could be finer than tingly teabags.
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(what?)
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[Withywindle]

23. I like teabags

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TEABAGS, not testicles, you perv!

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Nothing more refreshing on a hot summer day than lemon juice in water.

[MiddleFingerMom]

24. Agreed about the lemon juice in water, except...

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...make mine lime juice.
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BEST of all possible refreshing worlds -- seltzer water with the TEENIEST splash of Rose's Lime Juice.
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[femmocrat]

25. I keep a huge bottle on my desk.

A necessity of teaching these days.

We have the dispensers on the walls, but the kids liked to play with the foam too much and no one ever refilled them. Last year was the first school year that I didn't even get a cold. (I usually get 2 or 3 a year with laryngitis as well.) Not so much as a sniffle last year! :)

Another note on the wall dispensers--- supposedly they removed them from the middle school because the kids figured out there was alcohol in there and were lapping it off their hands. ewwwwww

[Heidi]

28. I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer, as well as a package of Desinfect tissues, in my briefcase.

I travel a lot by plane, train and ferry, and I haven't had one real cold in the past 12 months since I started using hand sanitizer while traveling.

[Arkansas Granny]

26. meh. Not a big deal to me, either way. I don't use them, but I can see

where they might be a good idea in some situations.

[bigwillq]

27. I use it once and awhile

I actually really like the smell of it.

[supernova]

29. Similar to Kali

I usually keep it in the car for when soap and water aren't available. It's great for cleaning my hands after I'm done taking the trash to the recycling center, for example. We have trash service here, but I've never paid for it. I've always taken the trash myself. And yes, it's a messy, stinky job. :P

[uncommon]

31. I use it at work sometimes bc there is a lot of supply sharing and hand shaking but not

in my "real" life lol.

[TZ]

34. Like most things in life: everything in moderation.

[nolabear]

37. Fine in theory, but I've never seen one that didn't STINK!

I don't WANT to remind myself of the great outdoors!

[KT2000]

38. Costco has good ones

The are handi-wipes that are wet towels, foil wrapped and smell like alcohol for just a minute because it evaporates so fast. No fragrance and you feel like you actually washed your hands.
Great for travelling too.

[Skip Intro]

40. I carry a bottle of it around with me.

Handle cash and a few handshakes during a normal day. I don't know where that stuff's been.

I'm not Monk or Howie Mandell weird with it, but I got that gel handy.