Do YOU know how to wash your hands????

So, everyone thinks they know how to wash their hands, right? Simplest thing in the world, right?

Okay, so here's a test for you. Let's see how good you really are!

Take some Ben Gay, or some Vicks Vap-o-rub and rub it on your hands, all over. Now go wash your hands.

If your hands still smell like Vicks or Ben Gay, you haven't washed your hands well enough!

...20 seconds is a lot longer than most people think! (in between the fingers too).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If you're doing surgery, otherwise no.

a reply to: watchitburn

Well, that's actually where I heard that from...an Osteopath surgical RN.

originally posted by: watchitburn
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If you're doing surgery, otherwise no.

Even if you aren't doing surgery. The idea is to make your hands clean of the majority of micro and nano bugs.

Soap works partly by dissolving the lipid layers of the virus which breaks the 'packet' apart and exposes it to oxidants. It doesn't, however, do that instantly. It takes a little time.

The other thing soap does is to get in between surfaces and break surface tension that would hold micro-things together. This then means that they can be carried away in the water.

The third way it works is the mechanical action that physically mixes stuff into the water and off surfaces like the skin.

So, 20 seconds of washing is not too onerous of an inconvenience and it makes washing more than just splashing water over a naturally water repellent and oily surface.

It's like being told to chew your food better. After you get it trained in, it's not something you need to revisit that often.

Hahaha. I work at a composting plant that composts human excrement. I know how to wash my hands and not touch my face. Why doesn't everyone else know how to do this?


a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

For either of those substances a good wash with Dawn dish washing liquid or Lava Soap will do the trick in 20 seconds, regular hand soap will take quite a bit longer and probably more than one washing.

If you will urinate on your hands it disinfects them and keeps people from shaking your hands. Win Win.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Not a good test actually.

If you use heavy oil based / petroleum jelly layer on your hands, you would need a super heavy duty degreaser cleaner to break that stuff up.

The same applies if you were in the motorpool servicing a duece and a half and shoved your hand and forearm in a bucket of axle grease. You are not getting that off with regular soap and water in seconds. You most probably are not getting rid of that smell for a week.

a reply to: infolurker

The same applies if you were in the motorpool servicing a duece and a half and shoved your hand and forearm in a bucket of axle grease. You are not getting that off with regular soap and water in seconds. You most probably are not getting rid of that smell for a week.

Thank you for posting that... I was going to point out something similar but you nailed it.

Change the oil on a diesel engine and screw up and have it dump all over you.

Then go "wash it off for 20 seconds and if the smell is still there then you did it wrong".

LOL..... just no.

That smell wears off over the course of a few days, no matter how long you scrub your hide.

So it's a bad example.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Been an OCD hand washer since my forst job in food service, age sixteen. My average tooth brushing is a multi step process usually lasting 3-5 minutes.

When it comes to hygiene, I have been a compulsive cleaner since I been a kid. Its the very basis of how I became really good with measuring the passage of time in my mind as well. I can guess ninety seconds passage while multi tasking pretty damn accurately.

Any number of hours I can usually hit the time within ten to fifteen. Better believe I k kw what twenty seconds feels like.

For tough jobs though, like auto jobs I like to just splash on heavy duty degreaser first, sometimes multiple dosing, and then wash with soap and water.

Y'all would probably laugh if you knew how often I lather rinse and repeat for minutes at a time, and its been that way for years. Pretty sure its that true OCD.

a reply to: GentrySociety

ONLY assuming you are using fresh "real time" urine. Despite urine being clean, as a culture medium things start growing in it immediately.

This video is an eye opener...

I hope the embed works, never tried from a phone before... 😬

a reply to: TOMFROMOZ

just going to say use REGULAR soap do not use antibacterial soap..it leasves a few bacteria and eventually these few hardy ones become resistant super bacteria.....sind the happy birthday or ABC song in your head while washes they are 20 seconds long!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I have spent most of my life in kitchens and I know how
to wash my hands.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I let my dogs lick my hands clean.