Effects of hand disinfection with alcohol hand rub, ozonized water, or soap and water: time for reconsideration?

Abstract

Effects of hand disinfection with alcohol hand rub, ozonized water or soap water -time for reconsideration? SummaryWe tested the effect of alcohol hand rub in eradicating Escherichia coli, and compared it with hand wash using ozonized tap water or soap and water. Alcohol eradicated all bacteria in 10 of 35 participants, but with an average (SD) of 2330 (4227) CFU/mL left after disinfection, while ozonized water removed all bacteria in 10 of 55 participants, with an average of only 538 (801) CFU/mL left (p=0.045). Soap washing was the most effective with total removal of bacteria in 6 of 20 participants, with an average of 98 (139) CFU/ml (p=0.048 and 0.018 versus ozonized water and alcohol, respectively).

The Prevalence and Clinical Features of Skin Irritation Caused by Infection Prevention Measures During COVID-19 in the Mecca Region, Saudi Arabia

“…Furthermore, a significant association between new-onset symptoms and more frequent hand washing during the pandemic was detected Therefore, we recommend spreading awareness of skin protective modalities and the use of new infection prevention measures, such as regular skin moisturization for hand protection and possibly using less damaging skin disinfectants like ozonized water for hand disinfection as it has been shown to be more effective and skin-friendly than alcohol for eradicating E. Coli, although further research is needed to see whether it can be used effectively against viruses such as COVID-19. 18 …”

Rapid Inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 with Ozonated Water

“…Ozonated water may show a limited effect on microorganisms depending on the conditions, but highconcentration ozonated water (≥10 mg/L) has enough of an effect even in the presence of inhibitory materials such as proteins (Hirai et al 2019). Although mediumconcentration (4 mg/L) ozonated water may be equivalent or slightly inferior to propanol (60%)-based hand rubs for disinfecting hands (Appelgrein et al 2016), one of the advantages of ozonated water is that it causes marginal or no skin damage when disinfecting hands (Breidablik et al 2019(Breidablik et al , 2020. Considering these issues, the fact that higher concentrations of ozonated water show stronger inactivating effects on SARS-CoV-2 may be a useful finding when using ozone-based hand disinfectants to prevent fomite infection.…”

“…A variety of disinfectants can reduce viral viability with a contact time of at least 30 seconds or more (Kratzel et al 2020). Among hand rub solutions, ozonated water is one of the promising candidates, because it is known that ozonated water has an inactivating effect on some microorganisms (Choudhury et al 2018;Hirai et al 2019;Shelobolina et al 2018;Song et al 2018) and is less harmful to human beings (Breidablik et al 2019(Breidablik et al , 2020. Furthermore, the production of high-concentration ozonated water, such as more than 7 mg/L, has been facilitated by the advent of electrolytic ozone generators (Nakamura et al 2018).…”

Rapid inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 with ozone water

“…Ozone water may show a limited effect on microorganisms depending on the conditions, but high-concentration ozone water (≥10 mg/L) has enough of an effect even in the presence of inhibitory materials such as proteins [16]. Although medium-concentration (4 mg/L) ozone water may be equivalent or slightly inferior to propanol (60%)-based hand rubs for disinfecting hands [23], one of the advantages of ozone water is that it causes marginal or no skin damage when disinfecting hands [17, 18]. Considering these issues, the fact that higher concentrations of ozone water show stronger inactivating effects on SARS-CoV-2 may be a useful finding when using ozone-based hand disinfectants to prevent fomite infection.…”

“…A variety of disinfectants can reduce viral viability with a contact time of at least 30 seconds or more [10]. Among hand rub solutions, ozone water is one of the promising candidates, because it is known that ozone water has an inactivating effect on some microorganisms [13][14][15][16] and is harmless to human beings [17,18]. Furthermore, the production of highconcentration ozone water has been facilitated by the advent of electrolytic ozone generators [19].…”