We’re all (hopefully) using hand sanitizer these days. But it’s important to use hand sanitizer correctly! Rather than treating hand sanitizer as a wholesale replacement for scrubbing your hands with soap and water, it’s better to think of hand sanitizer as a portable and convenient tool you can use to supplement your regular hand washing regimen.

If you use hand sanitizer correctly, you’ll be a lot safer and can help avoid spreading the coronavirus to your family or friends. Let’s break down how you can use hand sanitizer properly and when you should use hand sanitizer instead of soap and water.

How Does Hand Sanitizer Work?
Hand sanitizer works only because of its primary and active ingredient: alcohol. Hand sanitizers can be made with either ethyl alcohol or isopropyl alcohol, and either variety works just fine even if there are a few differences between them.

Without getting too technical, the shape and unique properties of alcohol as a molecule allow it to “denature” cellular walls. This means that most types of harmful bacteria and viruses are destroyed when they come into physical contact with any amount of alcohol.

By rubbing hand sanitizer on your hands, you make it almost impossible for most types of bacteria to survive. This includes the coronavirus.

However, hand sanitizer is only really effective if you use it correctly. So let’s break down how you can do just that.

How to Use Hand Sanitizer Effectively?

Fortunately, the CDC and the FDA both have lots of guidelines about the proper use of hand sanitizer.

They stress that, while hand sanitizer is definitely a useful product for most people to take advantage of, you shouldn’t use it as a full replacement for soap and water. That’s because, for all of its benefits, hand sanitizer is still not quite as good at destroying bacteria and viruses as soap and water.

There are a few types of bacteria, like the norovirus, that feature cell walls that are resistant to the damage alcohol causes. On the other hand, the abrasive and alkaline nature of soap molecules is good enough to kill 99.999% of germs and bacteria, making soap and water the best-sanitizing solution bar none.

Still, it’s important to use hand sanitizer correctly if soap and water aren’t available. You should:

* Only use a little bit of hand sanitizer for both your hands. Since modern hand sanitizer products are made with a gel base, you should be able to spread plenty of the solution between both hands with only a few moderately sized drops.
* Store your hand sanitizer in a cool and dry place. That’s because hand sanitizer can eventually expire due to alcoholic evaporation. This lowers the concentration of alcohol inside a hand sanitizer bottle and makes it less effective.

* By the same token, leaving your hand sanitizer in the sun may cause the alcohol to evaporate more quickly.
* Only use hand sanitizer with an alcohol concentration of 60% or greater. This means that there’s enough ethyl or isopropyl alcohol to effectively kill the majority of germs and bacteria on any applied surface. If the hand sanitizer doesn’t have this much alcohol, it’s not nearly as effective and should be skipped over.
* Use hand sanitizer before and after visiting anyone who’s in a hospital or nursing home, and especially if they are sick.

To appropriately apply hand sanitizer:

* Generously spread the sanitizer on your hands so you can saturate them.
* Rub your hands together until they start to feel dry. For most hand sanitizer products, this will take around 20 seconds. Isopropyl alcohol products, like the kind offered by Dr. Brite, may take only up to 15 or so seconds since isopropyl alcohol dries more quickly but does not leave your skin feeling overly dry.

When to Use Hand Sanitizer?

Of course, knowing how to use hand sanitizer is only useful if you also know when to use it for maximum effectiveness.

* Try to use hand sanitizer anytime you come into contact with commonly touched surfaces or objects. Doorknobs, countertops, TV remotes, and similar objects are all great examples. Apply a little hand sanitizer to your hands when you touch these objects or surfaces and are planning to head somewhere else or go home
* Similarly, apply hand sanitizer whenever you come home from a day at work or from visiting friends and family members. This will prevent you from spreading any germs you might have picked up throughout the day (though handwashing is preferred if you can!)
* Apply some hand sanitizer before and after cleaning a wound or treating an injury. Alcohol-based products have been used in this way for centuries because alcohol reduces the possibility of infection.

Basically, any time when it might take too long to use soap and water (or if soap and water are unavailable for whatever reason, like if you're hiking) is a great time to use hand sanitizer instead. Remember, hand sanitizer might not be quite as effective as soap and water, but it’s much better than not doing anything and letting bacteria sit on your hands to be spread from surface to surface.

Try not to apply too much hand sanitizer, however. Doing so could easily dry out your hands. In most cases, applying hand sanitizer once every hour or two is more than enough.

Summary
All in all, hand sanitizer is a tool. It’s only effective so long as we use it properly, in the right amounts, and in the right circumstances. No one wants to be one of those people that drinks hand sanitizer in an attempt to get rid of the common cold!

It’s a good thing the guidelines for hand sanitizer use are pretty straightforward. Be sure to contact us if you have other questions, and don’t hesitate to look at our online catalog of isopropyl alcohol-based hand sanitizer products.