Should I Purell My Nostrils? Can Lysol Disinfect The Air? : Goats and Soda Can rubbing hand sanitizer inside the nostrils help reduce infection? Can spraying Lysol in a room every hour or so disinfect the air? Plus: a primer on how to use hand sanitizer effectively.
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When I get in my car, I always use a squirt of hand sanitizer for my hands. With the tips of my forefinger and thumb, I then rub some of the sanitizer just inside my nostrils. Does this have any helpful or detrimental effect?
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Wait, what? Well, good for you for remembering the hand sanitizer for your hands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says keeping your hands clean is always important to reduce infection but especially so now to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But ... not in your nose, says Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University who previously was Baltimore's health commissioner. Putting hand sanitizer on your nostrils isn't a barrier to breathing in the virus.
If your hands come in contact with the virus — say by touching a steering wheel that someone with COVID-19 sneezed on, then using hand sanitizer can kill the virus from your hands and keep it from entering your body if you touch the mucus membranes in your nose, eyes or mouth, Wen says. But hand sanitizer on, or in, your nose, won't keep you from inhaling in virus particles which can attach to mucus membranes deep inside your nose and throat.
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Your best bet is the whole combination of protective measures: frequent washing or hand sanitizing your hands, especially if you come in contact with an item or surface that someone else might have touched, physical distancing and wearing a mask.
With so many people using hand sanitizer, some popular brands can be hard to find. But don't just settle for any brand: The Food and Drug Administration has found that some hand sanitizers contain hazardous ingredients such as methanol or wood alcohol, which can be toxic when absorbed through the skin or ingested and can be life-threatening when ingested. Check this FDA website to see if the brand you have or are planning to buy is on its list of hand sanitizers to avoid.
And as long as we're talking about hand sanitizer, here are some refresher tips you might have forgotten since the beginning of the pandemic, courtesy of the CDC and University of Pennsylvania:
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We want to plan a birthday party for 13 people. We are all committed to wearing masks and social distancing. Would it help to spray Lysol in the rooms every 30 to 60 minutes to help with disinfecting the air?
We hate to be a literal party pooper, but, in a word, no, says Steve Bennett, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Household & Commercial Products Association, the trade association for cleaning products such as Lysol.
A disinfectant spray is actually designed for surface use, so spraying it in the air will not be effective in protecting indoor guests from COVID-19, Bennett says. He adds that there are no sprayable household products currently registered with the Environmental Protection Agency that can be used to disinfect the air. (And as we reported in an earlier FAQ: Portable air cleaners can limit the spread of the virus via long-range airborne particles by capturing most of those particles in a HEPA filter and cleaning the air at a rate of up to six times per hour.)
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It would be nice to think we could spray away the virus, but the problem with disinfecting spray is that it only lasts in the air for a few seconds and then falls to the ground, or evaporates, ending any protection, says James Malley, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. So even if you sprayed the air with disinfectant, it wouldn't linger long enough to be effective in the next moment if anyone who's contagious (and not showing symptoms) has resumed talking or breathing in the indoor space.
Like Bennett, Malley says disinfectant sprays are really meant for cleaning surfaces such as kitchen countertops or doorknobs — though he prefers disinfecting wipes. With wipes, you can be sure you've disinfected the entire surface because you can visually see what has gotten wet and what hasn't, he says. With spray disinfectant, it can be harder to distribute the product across a surface and harder to tell where you've already sprayed. If you do choose to use wipes, Malley has a tip: To ensure a surface is fully disinfected, wait for the surface to dry before touching it.
To learn more about how COVID-19 spreads through the air and how to protect yourself, watch this video from correspondent Pien Huang.Cleaning your hands regularly remains one of the simplest and most-effective defenses against illnesses including COVID-19, the respiratory infection caused by the novel coronavirus.
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But when it comes to getting rid of germs, is washing with soap and water always the best choice? Are there situations in which it’s better to use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer? And, are there hand sanitizers to avoid?
Both actions will make your hands cleaner, just in different ways. One method physically removes germs from the surface your skin and the other kills any germs that might be living there on contact.
Unless you’re using an anti-bacterial soap, washing your hands with soap and water probably won’t kill many germs. But that’s not really the purpose. The goal of lathering up and scrubbing is not to kill germs, but to wash them away. The combination of suds and friction makes it easier to detach germs and dirt from your skin and rinse them down the drain.
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Hand sanitizer is designed to kill any germs it comes into contact with. So, the germs are still on you. They’ve just hopefully been neutralized.
To me, washing your hands with soap and water will always be the gold standard, because it’s better to have no germs on your hands than possibly dead germs on your hands.
When you wash your hands properly, you are literally removing the germs from your skin. They simply are not there anymore, so they cannot hurt you.
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But when you use a hand sanitizer, you’re not removing anything. So, if you don’t apply it thoroughly or wait to wipe off the excess, there’s always a risk that you might miss some germs, and those could be the ones that make you sick.
Apply the gel generously, and rub it all over your hands. Let it air dry for at least 20 seconds. And don’t wipe off any excess right away, as it takes about that long for the hand sanitizer to work.
Yes. The Food and Drug Administration is investigating a number of companies for selling hand sanitizers containing methanol and 1-propanol. Methanol, also known as wood alcohol, is a known toxin that can cause permanent blindness when absorbed through the skin and be lethal to humans when ingested. Propanol is also a toxin, and can be deadly if ingested.
Q&a For Consumers
You should also avoid any hand sanitizers that claim to be “FDA approved” for killing the coronavirus, as these claims are false. No hand sanitizer has been approved by the FDA for that purpose.
Generally, I would say anytime you’d like to have cleaner hands, but don’t have access to soap and water. This could be after you’ve been out touching things in public, like door handles, elevator buttons or gas pumps, or after you’ve been petting a cat or dog.
Hand sanitizer is better than nothing, but do your best to wash with soap and water every time you’ve used the restroom, sneezed, coughed, or blown your nose. You should also wash with soap and water before you eat or prepare food for anyone else. And remember to lather up your hands completely — front and back — to wash around your nailbeds and under your fingernails, and to scrub for at least 20 seconds, or as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday to You” twice or the ABC song once.
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