Disinfect hands – we all do and we can all. Well, wrong thought. There are a few things that almost no one pays attention to or knows about when it comes to disinfecting hands. We have Dr. Andrea Sättler, Corporate Director International R&D Body / Skin / Oral Care at Henkel Beauty Care.
Disinfection errors
After disinfecting, our hands feel dry, rough and not really good. So many of us use the hand cream that is supposed to make our skin supple again. And this is exactly where, according to Dr. Andrea Sättler the mistake:
You must not use a cream immediately after disinfection, then the disinfection effect is gone again. You should let the product work for a while so that all bacteria are really gone.
So even if we need to take care of our hands, we should definitely wait a few minutes. So we can just make sure that all bacteria disappear from our hands. And also here applies: Disinfect really thoroughly – do not forget the fingertips and the area between the fingers!
Of course it is not bad if you do it anyway, since we don't want to do any surgery. The cream is not that badly contaminated with bacteria either. However, after applying the cream, the hands are no longer sterile.
How to disinfect?
According to Dr. It is important to sattlers that it contains as little alcohol as possible and many moisturizing substances or nourishing ureas. But what about the disinfectant? Pure alcohol or maybe not?
It has to be a diluted alcohol. It is said that alcohol only has a disinfecting effect if it is more than 60 percent concentrated. But a proportion of water must remain because the bacteria do not dissolve directly in alcohol. You need water to bring the alcohol molecules to the bacterium.
So, the vodka doesn't help disinfecting. We prefer to use classic disinfectants from pharmacies and drugstores. You now know what to watch out for …