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sometimes i hate working in a hospital. seems that a lot of sinks have been replaced with purell dispensers that gross me out! that stuff makes my hands feel terrible.

I'm with you Universal. I just started working at a hospital and I've never been a germaphobe before. Now I'm expected to be using those gels till my skin falls off. I've always been a really healthy person too. I have so much sick leave saved up I could never use it all. Just this week I got sick for the first time in years because of my new job. What is a girl to do?

I'm with both of you guys! I also work at a hospital, in an office FULL of germaphobs... So I wind up being the weirdo because I don't use that stuff at all (I'm not in direct patient care either, but when I was I wouldn't use that either. Just good hand-washing techniques, which seemed to have worked for the most part for over one hundred years).

I think we have all been buying into the mass marketing about how we live in such a germ laden world and need to sterilize it, which is honestly the worst thing we could do!! Prelim studies say this is also why allergies are also on the rise...what are we doing to ourselves?

A recent study showed that handwashing was more effective than Purelling for preventing the spread of germs in hospitals.

This post just gives me more things to be paranoid about! And that list about danger zones in the home? Pretty much sent me into a germaphobic tailspin. I have to keep reminding myself that my parents and grandparents did just fine in their years spent in a pre-antibacterial soup of germs.

Most of the stuff in hospitals is a 70% alcohol gel which doesn't contain the triclosan you're referring to. For example, Purell is an alcohol gel and doesn't have triclosan.

Please reference the journal article or press release of studies. Otherwise my little shriveled scientist heart shrivels some more and I get crankier.

"Or better yet, don't use them at all and stick to natural ingredients formulas for cleanup duties around the "danger zones" in the home."

While I'm all for natural, this statement implies that using natural stuff won't spread MRSA around like an antibacterial wipe. I think the point of the study is that MRSA is considered "resistant" because very little can kill it. So using a natural remedy for cleaning up is just as likely to spread MRSA around the house or hospital as an antibacterial wipe.

Nice job on the photo, Gregory. I approve. :)

ugh. it drives me nuts how over-the-top people are about using antibacterial products! spreading MRSA is the least of it...it is precisely the overuse of these sort of products (as well as inappropriate use of antibiotics and people's failure to complete their prescribed course of antibiotics) that leads to the evolution of these resistant bacteria in the first place! this near pathologic obsession with killing all microbes is also implicated in the rise of asthma, food allergies & other auto-immuney sort of diseases. i also work in a hospital and care deeply about the health of my patients, but in almost all cases a good handwashing will suffice. i'll leave the triclosan for when i'm scrubbing in for surgery.

and neakstreak: don't worry, that comes with the territory of being a newbie in a hospital. expect to be the sickest you've ever been (in frequency & severity) for the next 1.5 years. it's just like being a new school teacher...you're building up your immunity, and then you're golden!

I work in a prison office and the women around me use those anti-bacterial wipes every day. Trouble is that we share desk so it is only 'your' desk for your shift and then somebody else takes over, uses a wipe and calls themselves cleaning up. I use them too and I can honestly say that I have rarely been sick or caught a cold. I like them for cleaning telephones and flat surfaces as in the desk. Come to think of it, we aren't very sick in my office.