Submitted by samuelma t3_z8r5za in explainlikeimfive
sparklesandflies t1_iycwsil wrote
Other posts are addressing your main question, but I want to take a sec to correct your conclusion about germs.
The germs are not being dissolved in hot water. Bacteria will not break apart in any water that would be safe to touch. The soap helps to break down fats and oils on your skin so they can be rinsed off easier, and the scrubbing action of your hands does the work of actually getting things off. You can just as safely wash with cold water, but most people find warm to slightly hot water more comfortable.
BongkeyChong t1_iye22ly wrote
this seems wrong, i feel like without hot water, i am smearing skin grease and oils around, not a lot but like, what your hands would generate in a few hours, and I assume germs can become infused with such congregations of detritus and with using cold water only, my hands feel waxy faster because they heat up to normalize after washing along with taking longer and probably not being as completely as effective as possible.
It doesn't have to be super hot water either, as long as it is above 80 degrees or so it becomes even more useful, below that and you might as well just suds up and wipe dry with a paper towel because you're not gonna convince your skin to let go of that microbial film.
sparklesandflies t1_iyecjg5 wrote
That’s what the soap is for. I guess that just rinsing in warm would be better than just rinsing in cold, but neither is particularly effective.
From the CDC: “Is it better to use warm water or cold water? Use your preferred water temperature – cold or warm – to wash your hands. Warm and cold water remove the same number of germs from your hands. The water helps create soap lather that removes germs from your skin when you wash your hands. Water itself does not usually kill germs; to kill germs, water would need to be hot enough to scald your hands.”
Thor527 t1_iyddf2w wrote
To add to this, unless the hand soap is anti microbial, hand washing generally doesn’t kill germs. As you said though it helps rinse them off your skin and temperature doesn’t make any difference beyond comfort unless it’s hot enough to really burn you.
Edit: I stand corrected, disrupting the membrane can kill some bacteria. I thought that was only true for some soaps and not all but I guess I was wrong.
TyrconnellFL t1_iydfl8q wrote
That is wrong. Soap is very effective at disrupting cell membranes and destroys bacteria. The surface of cells, including many bacteria, is kind of like a bubble of fats. Not exactly days, but similar enough that soap does the same thing and dissolved it. Dissolve the surface of a cell and all the innards spill out. Now it’s not a living cell, it’s a collection of dead cell bits.
Soap will also detach many bacteria and let you wash them off, but soap itself is strongly antimicrobial. It doesn’t contain antibiotics and for most uses there’s no reason to add antibiotics. The same is true for alcohol hand sanitizer: it’s not antibiotic, but it’s lethal to cells.
IonizingKoala t1_iydnmvi wrote
The FDA has found that anti-microbial soap is equally as effective as regular soap. But the main anti-microbial ingredients can actually be harmful to the environment, so it's worse if you care about the environment.
It's different in a hospital setting, I think they have some more unique reasons for needing to use anti-microbial soap.
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