“Go Wash Your Hands” of that Flu Bug
Posted by Monica Stanton on October 12, 2009
Wash or Sanitize?
Here is an interesting article from Dr. Michael Grant, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado.
“The Daily Camera has recently reported on vigorous efforts to provide so-called ‘hand sanitizer’ gels and liquids to schools as a preventive measure for H1N1 viral spread and for general bacterial population suppression. I argue that this strategy has short-term advantages and long-term disadvantages with the latter being substantially more serious.
Just as current evolutionary theory predicted, we now have abundant data on what happens when we broadly distribute antibiotics or anti-virals into the environment (such as in schools): Resistant strains evolve and can no longer be controlled with those formerly effective tools.
As our society moved from the ‘wonder’ drug penicillin to methicillin, for example, strains of Staphylococcus aureus that were resistant to both became much more abundant and deadly, particularly in medical treatment environments. That steady evolutionary change increased the risk of fatal infections enormously. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that in 2005, about 19,000 fatalities were attributable to MRSA (methicillin resistant S. aureus), more deaths than from HIV, AIDS or homicides.
Hand sanitizers often employ either Triclosan or alcohol in their solutions to serve as sanitizers. One major problem, implicit in the hand sanitizer strategy, derives from the prevalent view that alcohol is not an antibiotic chemical. It is. And microbial populations respond to it just as they respond to other antibiotics. Microbiologists have clearly shown that alcohol resistance traits can develop quickly becoming more widespread in microbial populations when alcohol becomes common in their environment in the same ways as MRSA (technical biochemical details differ).
For prevention purposes in healthy people, thorough washing with ordinary hand soap (without antibiotic additives!) constitutes the preferred strategy over widespread use of hand sanitizers. Michael Grant ”
We at Operation: Vitality! prefer a natural botanical hand wash that is non-toxic, pH balanced, and biodegradable. Here’s our choice. Now go wash your hands!
