The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has produced a patient safety video about the importance of handwashing for hospital patients and their healthcare providers. The instructional piece entitled “Hand Hygiene Saves Lives” is available for hospitals to offer their newly-admitted patients. I think everyone should watch and learn:
Source: CDC-TV
Remember “cooties” in grade school? You know, the germs or disease that girls gave boys or boys gave girls in grade school if they touched? Well, it seems they’re becoming an epidemic. Thank goodness someone checked for “cooties” on the Stanley Cup:
The NHL champion Blackhawks’ beloved trophy stopped by the Chicago Tribune newsroom, and so we took the opportunity to do something the Cup’s keeper said had never been done: We swabbed it for germs. We sent the samples to the Chicago lab EMSL Analytical, which found very little general bacteria and no signs of staph, salmonella or E. coli. “It’s surprisingly clean,” lab manager Nancy McDonald said. Just 400 counts of general bacteria were found, she said. By comparison, a desk in an office typically has more than 10,000.
No staph species detected? Hmmm. I think there was a sampling error…
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
So I’m at work the other day and I see this Glade bathroom air freshener sitting in a bathroom and it hits me: What’s the appropriate bathroom air freshener protocol? I know everyone should always wash their hands when they use the restroom to help control infectious disease, but having a touchable canister of bathroom air freshener instead of an automatic air freshener made me think:
Should I wash my hands before I spray the bathroom air freshener or should I spray the air freshener before I wash my hands?
You just never know what’s on the spray nozzle of these manual bathroom air fresheners. So do you wash your hands and then spray the air freshener out of common courtesy for others and not trust that others have done the same and then wash your hands again? What’s the protocol for this? Take the Bathroom Air Freshener Poll and put the controversy to rest once and for all. The world wants to know.
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
Forget the debate over soap and water vs. alcohol sanitizers. Soon you may be cleaning your hands with plasma. The New York Times is reporting on research into plasma as a method of hand cleaning. Basically, you’ll stick your hand in a little box for a few seconds and then the plasma will zap all the germs, including MRSA. The technology is not ready for action yet, but sounds pretty cool. Except for one thing–if you look at the photos that accompany the article, you’ll notice that a normal-looking human hand is inserted in the box, but the hand that comes out the other side (in the next photo) looks creepy and synthetic. What else is that plasma doing?
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
With news reports about the H1N1 flu all over the place, you may not think about the old “stomach flu” right now. Did you know that there really is no such thing as the stomach flu? If you have diarrhea or vomiting, it is usually not from influenza virus, but rather from another bug that got you. Often these bugs get us from not properly handling our food or from unsanitary conditions in our kitchens. Don’t go blaming the restaurant so quickly because studies show our homes are a breeding ground for bacteria that make us sick, too!
Top places germs reside
Tips to prevent getting sick
Check out this research from the USDA:
Best Ways To Clean Your Kitchen Sponge
Your microwave or dishwasher can make sponges safer to reuse in today’s kitchens.
Heating your used kitchen sponges in your microwave for one minute, or washing them in your dishwasher and leaving them there through a drying cycle, are the most effective household ways to inactivate harmful bacteria, yeasts and molds.
ARS food safety experts who specialize in research on foodborne pathogens, like E. coli O157:H7, looked at several simple, convenient and often-recommended ways of cleaning reusable kitchen sponges. Techniques included soaking sponges for three minutes in a 10-percent chlorine bleach solution, soaking in lemon juice or sterile water for one minute, heating in a microwave at full power for one minute, or washing in a dishwasher—including through a drying cycle.
At the outset of the experiment, they soaked all the sponges for 48 hours at room temperature in a slurry of ground beef and laboratory compounds which allow bacteria, yeasts and molds naturally present in the beef to grow on the sponges.
Microwaving and dishwashing each killed nearly 100 percent of the bacteria, with dishwashing being only slightly (0.0001 percent) less effective.
And, microwaving and dishwashing each killed nearly all yeasts and molds; less than 1 percent (only 0.00001 percent) survived.
This post, H1N1 Flu: Where Germs Are Hiding, was originally published on Healthine.com by Brian Westphal.
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