Hand Sanitizer & the Nation of Wimps

[sheila]

This quote was taken from the article Dennis posted: A Nation of Wimps (http://www.onceuponalife.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15371). Its been bugging me ever since I read it because I have a different take on it.
Then there are the sanitizing gels, with which over a third of parents now send their kids to school, according to a recent survey. Presumably, parents now worry that school bathrooms are not good enough for their children.
I keep the sanitizing lotion in my diaper bag. I use it for those times when washing my kids' hands is inconvenient: like when we are having a picnic at the park-- its SO much easier to dole out a little hand sanitizer than to try to corral them both to the bathroom to wash their hands. And sometimes at home the same thing happens... especially when there are more kids around--once they are in their seats at the table, I don't want to give them excuses to get up again.

It has never occurred to me to use it in conjunciton with washing their hands. Am I misusing hand sanitizer? Or is this author misunderstanding why parents are sending it to school with their kids or is there something else I am just not seeing?

[Karri]

Gee --I use it the same way you do. Its so much easier to use that then find the bathrom, go in it with 3 small children in tow, hoist them up to a dirty sink, and wash their hands.
Personally, I would never send hand sanitizer to school with my kid. He knows how to wash his hands. :dunno: And I am not anal enough to make him sanitize after washing w/ soap & water.

[Nocona]

We use it the same way - in place of a soap and water scrub down if need be.

[Shanna]

:nod: Ditto to y'all... I keep the wipes in my car and a small bottle in my purse :dunno:

[Lette]

Funny... I just stocked up on this stuff yesterday at BJ's. :)

I use it alone too. I keep the big pump bottle right on the kitchen island. :up:

[Shel]

I usually use it alone. The only time I use it with soap and water is if we are in a not so clean restroom, at the doctors office or if we are near someone hacking and sneezing.

[kim]

hmm...i just use a baby wipe. apparently sanitizing isn't that important to me at all :lol:

[Jillian]

According to our hospital (from when I was hospitalized while pregnant) and our ped, hand sanitizer only actually works at preventing the spread of infections if you rinse it off immediatly after using it, because the dead germs can still make you sick..., and many germs aren't actually killed by the hand sanitizer it's self...the big ones, like staph and strep are, but many others are not affected by it at all. The general consensus was that they only thing hand santizer does is make more germs resistant...it doesn't actually help in keeping your hands clean or in stopping the spread of germs at all.

(we talked about this cause Janelle has an obsession with the stuff, she loves to use it...)

[MamaGoofy]

I keep it at work. It seems that people around here don't understand what the sinks and soap are for. So I wash my hands and come out and sanitize them. I do keep some in a bag when we go out just in case we cant find a bathroom to wash our hands. It has it's usefullness!

[Martian Lullaby]

hmm...i just use a baby wipe. apparently sanitizing isn't that important to me at all :lol:

Same here! We use baby wipes for everything! In fact, we wonder how we used to manage before we had a baby. :lol:

[Nichole]

According to our hospital (from when I was hospitalized while pregnant) and our ped, hand sanitizer only actually works at preventing the spread of infections if you rinse it off immediatly after using it, because the dead germs can still make you sick..., and many germs aren't actually killed by the hand sanitizer it's self...the big ones, like staph and strep are, but many others are not affected by it at all. The general consensus was that they only thing hand santizer does is make more germs resistant...it doesn't actually help in keeping your hands clean or in stopping the spread of germs at all.

(we talked about this cause Janelle has an obsession with the stuff, she loves to use it...)
Hmm... that's interesting, because the hospital I was in has a big bottle of hand sanitizer in every room for the nurses and doctors to use before examining patients. My mom is in charge of infection control at their clinic and they use it there, too. :scratch:

I found this (on here http://www.idsociety.org/Template.cfm?Section=News_Releases1&CONTENTID=10257&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm):

Hand sanitizer likely reduces the spread of colds and respiratory illnesses as well, investigators say.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends health care workers use hand sanitizer.

Said Thomas J. Sandora, MD, MPH, an assistant in medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital Boston and instructor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, “Using hand sanitizers is an excellent method for hand hygiene and can be an alternative to soap and water, particularly when a sink isn’t convenient.”



Anyway, I carry a bottle of hand sanitizer in the diaper bag as well as my purse for the same reason as many of you. It's just convenient. In a pinch, a diaper wipe will do, too. ;)

[AllyRae]

I don't use those things anyway.... I don't like the idea of killing the good bacteria. Most doctors agree that good vigerous hand washing with plain soap works better, so I'd rather my son learn how to wash his hand than slather on a lotion (which actually must stay on your hands without you touching other things for 20 seconds or so before it kills anything...and then as Jillian said, the dead germs must be removed after that).

[Jillian]

Hmm... that's interesting, because the hospital I was in has a big bottle of hand sanitizer in every room for the nurses and doctors to use before examining patients. My mom is in charge of infection control at their clinic and they use it there, too. :scratch:


Yea, our's did too, which is how Janelle got the hand sanitizer obsession, but they said it's just because they get funding from purell for using it.

[harmonielyn]

I keep two bottles of hand sanitizer, one in Madison's diaper bag and one in my purse because I never know which bag Ill be carrying. I dont think im too good for a bathroom. Today it came in handy in the middle of the mall where the nearest bathroom was on the other side and I needed to clean my hands before eating.

Our hospital has the hand sanitizer dispensers on the wall in each hospital room now too.

[~Deborah~]

I carry a small bottle of sanitizer in my purse for cleaning hands(then rinse off with water or baby wipe in case they stick their fingers in their eye or mouth) and the shopping cart handle if I have forgotten the cover:blush:.

I also have some antibacterial wipes in the diaperbag.

[Brooke]

I think everyone is too concerned with germs. Kids are germy and dirty. They wipe their hands on their pants and their noses on their sleeves. They touch each other and each other's stuff. There is no way you can prevent a kid from getting at least some kind of germ.

The point of the quote is that parents don't think that school bathrooms are clean enough for their kids so they send hand sanitizer too, since kids have to touch the door to leave the restroom, etc. I personally think that's excessive, because even if you teach your kids to wash their hands and use the sanitizer, do you really think they are going to do it at school where all the other kids are watching?

Anyway - I'm with Kim. Sanitizing isn't my top priority.

[Karri]

hmm...i just use a baby wipe. apparently sanitizing isn't that important to me at all :lol:
I typically use a baby wipe to wipe off the twins hands, because I dont want them putting their hands in their mouths. But I do my hands w/ the gel. And I always wipe down the table w/ an antibacterial wipe if we are eating.

ANYWAY.....
I was just watching the series the Today Show was doing, I think its called 'Dirty Nation'. Today they talked about hand sanitizers. And they said that NO, they do not kill "good" bacteria,nor do they kill everything on your hands. They are, however, the next best thing to use when soap & water arent available.

The hospital I had the twins at had some hospital-grade foam hand sanitizer. They only used it when there was an emergency...like in the NICU when one of the babies had an alarm that would go off and they didnt have time to wash hands. It is much better to quickly sanitize than it is not to use anything.

[Stacy]

I think everyone is too concerned with germs. Kids are germy and dirty. They wipe their hands on their pants and their noses on their sleeves. They touch each other and each other's stuff. There is no way you can prevent a kid from getting at least some kind of germ.

The point of the quote is that parents don't think that school bathrooms are clean enough for their kids so they send hand sanitizer too, since kids have to touch the door to leave the restroom, etc. I personally think that's excessive, because even if you teach your kids to wash their hands and use the sanitizer, do you really think they are going to do it at school where all the other kids are watching?

Anyway - I'm with Kim. Sanitizing isn't my top priority.
ITA! :nod:

[Eleanor]

We rarely use the stuff...usually for our hands if we're cleaning up a messy diaper and aren't able to get in to wash our hands right away, and I use it when I'm rounding at the hospital if a sinks not convenient.

Personally, we subscribe to the hygeine hypothesis (makes you less nuts when you have kids :) )- which is that periodic low level exposure to germs strengthens the immune system and makes you less sensitive to asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases...

I'm not really a big fan of antibiotic soaps for routine use either, since I think they just make resistant bugs. There's a place for them, if you're coming into contact with the big bad bacteria...but for regular cold/flu exposure that most people are concerned about, regular soap and water works just as well (especially since most things that make people sick are viruses, and not susceptible to antibacterial stuff anyway!)

[Bev]

I use diaper wipes a lot in the car and when I packed a diaper bag around. Now we have sanitizer and wipes in the car. I always have it in my briefcase at work for when I come out of a really disgusting home or something. Bath and Body Works have really nice smelling ones. :) I'm not too freaky about cleaning up germs for Mason's sake, but I'll be darned if I'm not going to sanitize my hands from some of the homes I've been too! :dead:

[Dennis]

I was just watching the series the Today Show was doing, I think its called 'Dirty Nation'. Today they talked about hand sanitizers. And they said that NO, they do not kill "good" bacteria,nor do they kill everything on your hands. They are, however, the next best thing to use when soap & water arent available.

This is the problem - all of the "experts" say something different.

[Pigglystix]

This is the problem - all of the "experts" say something different.

Isn't that true about every topic :lol:

I keep a bottle of hand sanitizer in the diaper bag as well. I use it after doing a diaper change since frequently I'm not near a sink (when we are out, obviously at home I can get to the sink :lol: )

We used it a lot when the babies were first home from the hospital and we asked everyone else to use it too. It worked - my kids were never sick those first couple of months (minus an ear infection at 2 months old).

But hey, works, doesn't work...at least my hands smell pretty afterwards :lol: (I use the bath and body works stuff)