David Love says: Not exactly. Alcohol based hand sanitizers can be effective against viruses depending on the alcohol content and the amount used. While it may not be as good as vigorous hand washing it is certainly better than nothing and I wouldn't hesitate to use them. Not using them because they provide a false security seems counterproductive. All hand sanitizers need to be rubbed in until the hands are dry. There won't be any fire hazard then. Viruses actually can live longer on non porous surfaces such as plastic whether they are clean or not. They can typically live on your hands up to about an hour and under the best of circumstances can live on outside the body for up to 48 hours. Lots of reading available on this subject. Well David, I have to say most experts agree with you on hand sanitizers and viruses, H1N1 or others. On the other hand the only scientific studies I saw referred to were ones sponsored or released by companies making hand sanitizers. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta says, "There are not a lot of data actually on how effective those sanitizers are against viruses. There have been some studies done over the years and the conclusion is washing your hands with soap and water is still probably the best idea. If you are having a busy day and it is hard to get to a sink, then carrying a bottle of hand sanitizer would be a good idea." I should explain my thoughts better. A bottle of sanitizer that has been sitting around a while or is more empty than full may not have the alcohol content that is recommended. Even if it is extremely effective though, if you rub your eyes or nose with your fingers while working on a piano, you could be infecting yourself. It is not easy to so self aware while working that you can stop this kind of touching, but that is what I am aiming for. To put it another way, even if you kill viruses with hand sanitizer before and after each piano, hands to the face while you are working on a piano can still get you. That is why I consider it false security. I think it would be better for us to kills the viruses on the keys. Here again, you are correct. The virus can live on a hard surface like plastic for some time, Cory Key Brite will not kill them. Does anyone use something like Lysol Disinfectant spray on piano keys? That stuff is supposed to be 99% effective within thirty seconds. That would really make the keys safe and school jobs would not be as potentially dangerous. I worry about what it might do to the keys though. Bruce Dornfeld, RPT bdornfeld at earthlink.net North Shore Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091104/c837a4e6/attachment.htm>
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