Tag: hygiene
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The Efficacy of Hand Sanitizers
Given their prevalence in offices, hospitals and pharmacies (how naïve?), I would have thought the effectiveness of hand sanitizers would have been a lot greater than it is: In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For…
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Paper Towels vs. Hand Driers
Fully accepting his bias, Paul Revere looks at the evidence in the long-standing paper towel–hand drier debate and finds in favour of the humble paper towel. There were four parts to the study: Part A looked at the drying efficiency of hand drying method; Part B involved counting the number of different types of bacteria…
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Children Exposed to ‘Dirt’, Healthier
From the ‘Science proves mum right’ and ‘Obvious, but still needs to be stated’ file comes the news that children who are exposed to bacteria, viruses, worms, and dirt have healthier immune systems. Public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure…
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Selling Hand-Washing to Africa
The New York Times on how Dr Val Curtis ‘sold’ hand-washing to Africa: Diseases and disorders caused by dirty hands — like diarrhoea — kill a child somewhere in the world about every 15 seconds, and about half those deaths could be prevented with the regular use of soap, studies indicate. But getting people into…