Liquid Hand Wash

Are they antibacterial in effect?

Hand hygiene is the single most effective way to prevent diarrhoea and various infections (reality check: according to various reports, diarrhoea happens to be the third leading cause of childhood mortality in India). Human skin provides a favourable environment for the existence and multiplication of a variety of microbes. The hands/skin come in contact with harmful bacteria/ germs while using common public places, public transport, polluted/contained environments, etc. Several products are available for hand hygiene: bar soap, liquid soap, gels, hand sanitisers and foams. The conventional toilet soap washes away the germs but does not kill them. Also, the soap itself can get contaminated with germs. Today, several hand-wash soaps are/claim to be antibacterial and at Consumer Voice we proceeded to test precisely this attribute with regard to liquid hand washes. We conducted antibacterial activity, ‘zone of inhibition’ and bacterial kill efficacy tests in the lab to judge the effectiveness of 10 liquid hand-wash brands in removal/ killing of microbes/germs.

A Report

material also generally contains perfumes for their acceptability among users.

Liquid hand-wash products are commonly known to be antibacterial/anti-germs. Most of the brands have declared their variants as providing protection from germs/killing germs/removing germs – this is clearly understood as being effective in fighting germs. In addition to antibacterial chemicals like TCC/TCN, some herbal ingredients are also equally effective in removing germs, as verified in the course of our laboratory tests. All the 10 brands were found to be effective in removing/killing germs.