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Do you 'Sanitize' Your Hands?

  • Hands, face, tummy, feet.. whatever we can get it on!

    Votes: 7 2.6%
  • never ::running away::

    Votes: 93 34.3%
  • only on occasion- sometimes we need it

    Votes: 152 56.1%
  • the obligatory 'other'

    Votes: 19 7.0%

Poll: Hand Sanitizer (spinoff)

4K views 108 replies 95 participants last post by  Jen_in_NH 
#1 ·
Another thread got me thinking.. Do you/your kids use hand sanitizer? Why or why not?

We absolutely do not. I nearly freak if someone tries to put it on the kids ('they' got my 8 yr old once). I've even gone so far with it as to tell her teachers not to give it to her but rather send her to the bathroom if she really needs to wash.

My issues with it have to do with the good/bad germ killing, the aweful smell that most have and that we don't know how animal-friendly most kinds are (we don't use products tested on animals).

Am I in the wrong with this? 'Cause in the other thread, a lot of mamas were recommending it.. I thought *not* using it was the natural living norm


Thanks!
 
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#103 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by orangefoot View Post
I have used it myself in hospitals when visiting people though where there are dispensers on walls next to every set of doors you pass through.
Yeah - I definitely use it in hospitals. I figure they're full of people with immune problems (whether chronic or temporary) or who are just doing so much work healing from whatever they have (be it an illness or an injury) that they really don't need the extra burden of my cold or whatever.

I mostly don't use them, because I don't really care if I get sick, or if my family passes a cold around or whatever.
 
#105 ·
I keep a small bottle in the car and in the my backpack when traveling by plane. I use it after we visit the grocery store when the kids want to eat a snack from the Kids Club. Or when traveling, especially by plane, before eating.
 
#106 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by loraxc View Post
I really don't think this is true in the case of alcohol-based sanitizers. These sanitizers physically destroy germs. Your argument is like saying that if enough people let themselves get hit and killed by cars, we would develop immunity to being hit by cars.

"Some people wonder if overuse of alcohol sanitizers could be a problem similar to the overuse of antibiotics, which is known to promote bacterial resistance. The good news is that alcohol sanitizers don't cause resistance because they work differently"

from http://www.everydayhealth.com/blog/z...read-of-germs/

"No mechanism for resistance to alcohol has been described in bacteria""

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_rub

Hundreds of such references on the web.

My post wasn't about bacteria developing immunity or resistance to alcohol. It was that hand sanitizers don't kill all bacteria, and the bacteria that are left behind will thrive in the absence of competition. Immunity and/or resistance are irrelevant to my argument.

The fact is, nearly every surface on earth is covered in bacteria (there are few things that are naturally sterile) including humans (we are all crawling in bacteria, mites, etc) and it is not really possibly or even desirable to get rid of them all.
 
#107 ·
I keep some in the car and use it when we don't have access to a sink (especially after changing a diaper). The kind I have is apple-scented. It smells nice. Normally we just wash our hands though. I've kept the same bottle of hand sanitizer in the car for over a year.
 
#108 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by onelilguysmommy View Post
oh and the docs office uses tons of it and all THREE of my kids and i got really sick(as in it hurts and feels horrible to get up and you can barely breathe) after the nb appt and checkups for the boys.
My doctor prefers not seeing hand-shaped welts on me, so he washes his hands the old-fashioned way as soon as he steps in the exam room, as do his nurses. He also prefers to not trigger migraines, nor asthma attacks.

Ask your healthcare providers to skip the sanitizer when dealing with your family. Do the exam rooms have sinks? Most do.

When I have a hospital stay, the nurses tape sheets of paper or boxes over the sanitizer dispensers with DO NOT USE written all over them. Then they do the same with the boxes of latex gloves (or remove them and replace with nitrile).

We pay them, after all. There's a reasonable expectation that they won't cause us more harm when they can prevent the whole issue. We may not be able to do anything about the general populace using that crap and contaminating grocery cart handles, door handles, or credit card machines, but we *can* ask our doctors to not use the crap.

I might have to stop going to WFM because they've put out lavender-scented sanitizer pumps in every checkout aisle--free for use. It's nasty and made me sick today.
 
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