Germs, we all know them, we’ve all heard of them, and we’ve all been affected by them at some point in our lives. While most everyone knows what they do, not nearly enough people worry about them. Germs are, by definition, a microorganism that causes disease, and anywhere people go, germs follow suit.
When a black light is used, germs and fluids appear as green accents. Germs are common and appear everywhere.
Mrs. Cabe, a health science teacher, shared some facts about germ prevention and about the impact using soap and water has on germ removal as opposed to using just running water. “Soap is what binds to the bacteria to remove it from hands and so obviously you’re gonna have much more bacteria removed if you’re using soap,” Cabe said.
Not only does soap affect the prevention and removal of germs but so does temperature. “You want a little bit of heat, but you don’t want a lot of heat. Using hot water can cause skin breakdown, can dry out the hands, burns obviously,” Cabe said. “The water shouldn’t be any higher than 105 degrees when you’re washing your hands. 105 is just a little bit above your body temperature. It’s gonna kill a little bit of your germs but not damage your skin.”
The length of time you wash your hands also a`ffects the removal of germs, and the most common rule for washing your hands is that you should always wash them for 20 seconds. “The recommendation is the whole 20 seconds, but that’s 20 seconds scrubbing your hands,” Cabe said. So once you build a lather, then you want to scrub for 20 seconds. It’s not necessarily the time that’s important, what’s important is getting all the surfaces.”
Some people choose to use hand sanitizer instead of soap and water. This is actually not the best practice. “You really shouldn’t be using the hand sanitizer non stop because it will end up creating a film on the hands and you wanna make sure that typically every 4-5 times you’re using hand sanitizer you should be washing your hands instead of using hand sanitizer,” Cabe said.
Cabe’s class conducted a study where they swabbed various surfaces in our school and left the samples to grow in petri dishes. These are some of the results:
“They just wanted to see what kind of bacteria or what kind of growth are we seeing on places that are touched a lot or that may not be being cleaned as well as we think they’re being cleaned,” Cabe said. Bacteria can be just about everywhere you touch, so you should always wash your hands and practice proper hygiene.
