Hip
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
One major route of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is via touching your mouth, nose or eyes after your hands have been in contact with a virally-contaminated surface.
Thus washing your hands when you get home is important, and in addition, when you are out and about, applying an alcohol hand sanitizer every hour or two is a good idea. But during an average day, an individual comes into contact with 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. Ref: 1 And one study found that on average, people touch their face every 3 minutes.
So even if you regularly use a hand sanitizer every hour, there are still many opportunities for viral contamination on a surface to be transferred to your face via your hands.
So I started thinking in terms of a persistent hand sanitizer, which would destroy any coronavirus contamination picked up on the hands even hours after the sanitizer is applied.
I came across povidone-iodine, which may work for this purpose: this paper surveys disinfectants for coronavirus, and says that povidone-iodine solution at just 0.23% is sufficient to destroy SARS and MERS coronaviruses within 15 seconds to 1 minute (see table 2), when coronavirus particles are placed in suspension in that solution.
Furthermore, unlike alcohol which only disinfects the hands there and then, applying povidone-iodine to the hands appears to have a persistent antimicrobial action, which can last for 6 hours (at least with respect to bacteria, but I could not find data for viruses). Ref: 1
10% povidone-iodine solution is available online (about £5 for 125 ml). So my idea was if you apply say a 1% or 2% povidone-iodine solution to your hands before you go out, your hands in theory may be self-decontaminating for the next few hours.
Obviously this approach has not been tested, but it may work. Any thoughts on its viability?
Another potentially useful persistent hand sanitizer for coronavirus is benzalkonium chloride. The above study found a 0.2% solution was less effective for coronavirus compared to povidone-iodine and alcohol, but nevertheless benzalkonium chloride has a persistent action on hands, lasting for 4 hours. Ref: 1
A similar disinfectant compound called benzethonium chloride is found in grape seed extract liquid supplements such as Citricidal® at around 8%. Ref: 1
Thus washing your hands when you get home is important, and in addition, when you are out and about, applying an alcohol hand sanitizer every hour or two is a good idea. But during an average day, an individual comes into contact with 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. Ref: 1 And one study found that on average, people touch their face every 3 minutes.
So even if you regularly use a hand sanitizer every hour, there are still many opportunities for viral contamination on a surface to be transferred to your face via your hands.
So I started thinking in terms of a persistent hand sanitizer, which would destroy any coronavirus contamination picked up on the hands even hours after the sanitizer is applied.
I came across povidone-iodine, which may work for this purpose: this paper surveys disinfectants for coronavirus, and says that povidone-iodine solution at just 0.23% is sufficient to destroy SARS and MERS coronaviruses within 15 seconds to 1 minute (see table 2), when coronavirus particles are placed in suspension in that solution.
Furthermore, unlike alcohol which only disinfects the hands there and then, applying povidone-iodine to the hands appears to have a persistent antimicrobial action, which can last for 6 hours (at least with respect to bacteria, but I could not find data for viruses). Ref: 1
10% povidone-iodine solution is available online (about £5 for 125 ml). So my idea was if you apply say a 1% or 2% povidone-iodine solution to your hands before you go out, your hands in theory may be self-decontaminating for the next few hours.
Obviously this approach has not been tested, but it may work. Any thoughts on its viability?
Another potentially useful persistent hand sanitizer for coronavirus is benzalkonium chloride. The above study found a 0.2% solution was less effective for coronavirus compared to povidone-iodine and alcohol, but nevertheless benzalkonium chloride has a persistent action on hands, lasting for 4 hours. Ref: 1
A similar disinfectant compound called benzethonium chloride is found in grape seed extract liquid supplements such as Citricidal® at around 8%. Ref: 1
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