Every week we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question that we should consider for a future article, send us please an e-mail to goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject: "Weekly coronavirus questions."
I always use a hand sanitizer spray when I get into my car. With the tip of my index finger and thumb, I rub a little disinfectant into my nostrils. Does this have a helpful or harmful effect?
Hope for? Good thing you remembered the hand sanitizer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say keeping hands clean is still important to reduce infection, but most importantly now to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But ... not on the nose, says Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University who was former Baltimore's health commissioner. "Putting hand sanitizer in your nose is not an obstacle to inhaling the virus."
If your hands come into contact with the virus, e.g. For example, by touching a steering wheel that someone with COVID-19 has sneezed on, "Using a hand sanitizer can kill the virus on your hands and prevent it from spreading. If you touch it, you can get into your body with mucous membranes in your nose, eyes, or mucous membranes." Mouth, "says Wen." But hand sanitizer in or in your nose doesn't prevent you from inhaling virus particles that can stick to the mucous membranes in your nose and throat. "
Your best bet is any combination of protective measures: frequent hand washing or disinfecting, especially if you come in contact with an object or surface that may have been touched by another person, are physically removed and wear a mask. .
With so many people using hand sanitizer, some popular brands can be hard to find. But don't settle for just any brand: The Food and Drug Administration has determined that some hand sanitizers contain dangerous ingredients, such as methanol or wood alcohol, which "can be toxic if ingested". through the skin or ingested and can be life threatening. recorded. " Visit this FDA website to see if the brand you have or are planning to buy is on the list of Hand Sanitizers to Avoid.
And while we dig into the topic of hand sanitizer, here are some reminder tips you may have overlooked since the pandemic began, courtesy of the CDC and the University of Pennsylvania:
- Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. This is a recommended percentage for removing virus particles.
- Squeeze out enough disinfectant to cover all the surfaces of your hands.
- After applying the disinfectant, rub your hands until they are dry for about 20 seconds.
- Do not rinse or clean the hand disinfectant until it is dry, otherwise it may not work well against germs.
- Hand sanitisers are durable. So get a new bottle when the expiration date is reached.
- Keep this disinfectant in the bag or carry bag that you normally carry with you in the car. Disinfectants can evaporate from the heat if left in the car and you may not be able to use them when you need them.
We want to organize a birthday party for 13 people. We are all committed to wearing masks and socially distancing ourselves. Would it help to spray Lysol into rooms every 30 to 60 minutes to sanitize the air?
The only time we don't have a mask is to eat.
We literally hate being a spoiler, but to put it simply, no, says Steve Bennett, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the Household & Commercial Products Association , the trade association for cleaning products like Lysol.
"A disinfectant spray is actually designed to be used on surfaces, so spraying it in the air won't be effective in protecting guests from COVID-19," says Bennett. He adds that there are currently no household aerosols registered with the Environmental Protection Agency that can be used to disinfect the air. (And as we reported in a previous FAQ, " Portable air purifiers can limit the spread of the virus through long-range particles in the air by trapping the majority of those particles in a HEPA filter and cleaning the air at speeds up to six times an hour. ")
It would be nice to think we could spray the virus, but the problem with disinfectant spray is that "it only holds it in the air for a few seconds and then falls to the ground or evaporates, killing any protection," says James Malley, Professor of Civil Engineering and Environment at the University of New Hampshire at Durham. Even if you spray the air with disinfectant, it won't linger long enough to be effective the next moment, when someone who is contagious (and showing no symptoms) speaks or breathes again. Inner space.
Like Bennett, Malley says that disinfectant sprays are actually intended to clean surfaces like kitchen counters or doorknobs, although he prefers disinfectant wipes. With the wipes, you can be sure that you have disinfected the entire surface, because "you can visually see what is wet and what is not," he says. Disinfectant spray can make it harder to spread the product in an area and it can be harder to know where you sprayed it before. If you want to use wipes, Malley has a tip: to make sure a surface is completely sanitized, wait for it to dry before touching it.
Learn more about how COVID-19 spreads through the air and how to protect yourself from this video by NPR correspondent Pien Huang.
Fran Kritz is a Washington, DC, resident reporter for health policy, which has contributed to the Washington Post and Kaiser Health News. Find her on Twitter: @fkritz .
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