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news.In a revelation that could be ill-received by hand hygiene product manufacturers such as Kimberly Clark and Johnson & Johnson, researchers have reported that nothing works better in getting rid of disease-causing viruses than washing one's hands with good old-fashioned soap and water.
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These results are from the largest, most comprehensive study ever done comparing the effectiveness of hand hygiene products, and reported by researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.
Among the viruses soapy hand washing flushes down the drain is the one that causes the common cold, the researchers said. Other removable viruses cause hepatitis A, acute gastroenteritis and a host of other illnesses.
A separate key finding was that waterless handwipes only removed roughly 50% of bacteria from volunteer subjects’ hands.
“We studied the efficacy of 14 different hand hygiene agents in reducing bacteria and viruses from the hands,” said Emily Sickbert-Bennett, a public health epidemiologist with the UNC Health Care System and the UNC School of Public Health. “No other studies have measured the effectiveness in removing both bacteria and viruses at the same time.”
For the first time, too, the UNC researchers tested what happened when people cleaned their hands for only 10 seconds. That represented the average length of time researchers observed busy healthcare personnel washing or otherwise disinfecting their hands at work.
Anti-microbial agents were best at reducing bacteria on hands, but waterless, alcohol-based agents had variable and sometimes poor effects, becoming less effective after multiple washes, the study found. For removing viruses from the hands, physical removal with soap and water was most effective since some viruses are hardy and relatively resistant to disinfection.