KANSAS CITY, Mo. – With the flu continuing to spread every day—both seasonal and swine varieties—people are looking for ways to stay safe and healthy.
Hand-sanitizers, those little soap dispenser-like pumps you see on desks and kitchen counters everywhere—are becoming more and more popular.
But are all hand-sanitizers created the same? And for that matter, do they really work better than soap and water? NBC Action News put them to the test, and here’s what we found.
We asked 16 nine and ten year olds to try 8 sanitizers—half of them name brand, and half of them generic. Four other kids tried soap with water, or water alone.
For the test, each child touched their fingertip to a Petri dish before treatment. Then: a squirt of hand-sanitizer. After that, one more touch of the Petri dish.
The samples were taken to Burt Anderson, a professor of molecular medicine at the University of South Florida.
In all, three brands showed signs of reductions in the amount of bacteria transferred. Germ-X and Purell both performed well, but the Walgreens brand showed the most effectiveness.
The CVS, Bath & Body Works, Target, and Publix sanitizers performed less well, showing a moderate to slight decrease in bacteria.
Only one brand, Smart & Silky, showed no reduction at all.
And what about the soap and water kids?
Surprisingly, our test showed little difference between the children that just washed their hands and those that used any of the sanitizers.
