Below are not formal scientific research, it’s just a fun research to reveal some interesting facts relating to our daily life; washing hands.
Let us compare our washing-hands activity using 7 items; sterilized water, Lifebuoy liquid soap and sterilized water, Bayclin-Sunclin (which contains NaCl 0.5%) on a container, Bayclin-Sunclin with flowing water, Handy Clean (a hand sanitizer which contains Ethyl Alcohol) for 10 seconds –as it says on the commercial–, Betadine antiseptic 1% (which contains Povidine Iodine) for 2 minutes, and the last one is Lifebuoy liquid soap and pipe water.
Seven volunteers are given 1 (one) item to wash their hands. Hands swab were taken and put onto a semi solid agar in order to culture the bacteria (if there any) before and after washing their hands.
Let see the results.
- Flowing sterilized water. (It’s scientifically sterile, of course. Not just an ordinary AQUA. Heated in autoclave at 1210 C/249.80 F) As you can see from the picture, the amount of bacteria reduce significantly in medium agar. Note: bacteria are marked as white dots.
- Lifebuoy liquid soap and sterilized water. The result is similar with the first one; the amount of bacteria reduce significantly in medium agar. See picture 2.
- Bayclin-Sunclin (NaCl 0.5%) on a container. It’s (almost) perfect clean! Note: scratch is on the glass plate. See picture 3.
- Bayclin-Sunclin with flowing water. Theoretically, it has the same result with #3. See picture 4.
- Handy Clean (Ethyl Alcohol) for 10 seconds. It’s (almost) look the same as before. See picture 5.
- Betadine antiseptic 1% (Povidine Iodine) for 2 minutes. Flawlessly clean! See picture 6.
- Lifebuoy liquid soap and pipe water. Not-so-much different. See picture 7.
- Don’t take these results as a basic comparison, especially for its particular brand. Those 7 items are working mostly the same, regarding their particular function in our daily life. For example, if you are having a wound, would you clean it with a Bayclin? The answer is strongly ‘NO!’ because Bayclin is used for washing clothes.
- Using Handy Clean for 10 seconds is shown (almost) useless. But it doesn’t mean Handy Clean is ineffective to clean our hands. The usage time, probably, needs to be much longer. 2 minutes, perhaps?
- Overall, the clean you want your hands to be, deeply depends on the way you wash your hands. From the results above, theoretically #3 and #4 has to have the same result. But why did the results show differences? Back again, it really depends on the way you wash your hands; in a rush or not.