Keeping your hands clean is extremely important, with research suggesting that regular hand washing is not only good for personal health but massively reduces the spread of things like respiratory infection and diarrheal disease too.
Germs and bacteria such as salmonella, E.coli, and norovirus are easily transferable through contact, and illnesses can be easily passed along just by shaking hands with somebody.
So when it comes to keeping your hands clean, is hand sanitiser more effective than liquid soap and water? The unsatisfying answer to this question is: it depends.
What Is The Difference?
The reason there is no clear answer to this question is that liquid soap and hand sanitiser have fundamentally different functions. When you wash your hands using a liquid soap dispenser, you are not killing germs and bacteria, but removing them.
This is why it is so important to wash your hands thoroughly, as liquid soap releases trapped dirt from your hands and suspend it in water, which is then washed away.
Hand sanitiser, however, does kill viruses and bacteria, as long as it is at least 60% alcohol. The alcohol softens the bacterial membrane of the germs on your hands, leaving the bacteria ineffective.
So when should each product be used?
Medical and nursing facilities
When you walk into doctors surgeons, hospitals, and other medical and nursing facilities, you’re likely to see plenty of hand sanitiser dispensers dotted around.
In this particular setting, alcohol-based hand sanitiser is recommended by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention as an alternative to soap, as it effectively kills bacteria quickly.
Medical professionals need to keep their hands clean throughout the day, in order to perform their duties in a sterilised setting, and washing with soap may not remove all bacteria – particularly if done in a hurry.
Kitchens and restaurants
If you work in kitchens and restaurants, however, liquid soap is a far superior choice for hand hygiene. While those working in medical and nursing facilities come into contact with various strains of bacteria and viruses, this is not the case for workers in the food service industry.
Instead, people working in kitchens and restaurants are likely to have proteins and fatty ingredients on their hands, which block antibacterial gels and hand sanitisers from doing their job.
Liquid soap dispensers are a much more popular choice in this environment, as they clean more thoroughly, removing food remnants and bacteria from the hands, while wet wipes may also help too.
Treatment and beauty clinics
While liquid soap and hand sanitiser have their specific uses, there are also environments where using both is helpful. In treatment and beauty clinics, for example, staff are likely to come into contact with a variety of viruses, bacteria and fungal infections.
It is essential in this environment to thoroughly wash with liquid soap before and after treating a client, while hand sanitisers may also be useful to quickly sterilise the hands before consultations.
While there is no definitive answer to the big question, hand sanitiser and liquid soap are both more suitable in specific situations, and equally important to maintaining good hand hygiene.
