•  On May, 28, 2020
•  admin
•   Disinfection

Household antiseptic product or sanitizer has never been so broadly discussed until the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19.  Not only China is having a great impact but also Malaysia.  In Jan-20 right before Chinese New Year, once China government announcement about the pandemic outbreak, many people are rushing to pharmacy to grab whatever household antiseptic product left on the shelf.  This could be a good sign that people are more concerned about keeping their hand clean.

Are they choosing the appropriate antiseptic products?

Keeping a good hygiene is a set of self-principle which needs determination and consistent practice.  In general, the population in Malaysia is having better grade in personal hygiene but we have less knowledge for entire cleanliness requirements.

Sanitizer, Disinfectant and Cleaner?

There are several terms we use for choosing a household antiseptic product, such as sanitizer, disinfectant and cleaner.  Let us start after clarifying these terms before we continue our discussion.

• Cleaner.  A general term uses to descript a product which uses for removing dirt on a surface.
• Sanitizer.  Killing the virus, bacteria or fungus.  This is to explain how effective we are removing the micro-organism from a surface such as our hand but a good sanitizer is not for removing dirt.  Your hand could be as dirty as it is but 99.9% of micro-organism is sanitizer.
• Disinfectant.  The purpose of disinfectant is to kill all unwanted microorganism on a surface.  Disinfectant is used for a broader area but with a specific requirement.  Such as you are choosing a disinfectant product for your house.

I know, some of the terms may look ambiguous after above briefing but let us start with this definition in mind.  There are other parameters we could consider such as biostatic after the disinfectant or sanitizer process, but we leave it to another article.

Household Antiseptic Products for Hand, Aerial Disinfectant

During the pandemic outbreak, WHO has published the key in keeping ourselves and the environment clean.  Most of the virus and bacteria growth is because of poor cleanliness.  I know you may have another opinion, but this should be the first step before we discuss removing germs.

You have to perform a thorough cleaning especially the environmental perspective.  You could use household detergent or cleaner so that the dirt and oil film could be removed.  After this round of cleaning, then we come into the antiseptic product.

Environmental Disinfectant

You shall select a suitable disinfectant product for the general hard surface disinfection purpose, such as mopping floor, table, telephone and toilet.  We know there are many choices out there, but we recommend to use an adequate disinfectant product which also cost-effective too!

  We propose you could consider both choices:

1. Bleach solution.  Dilute 1 to 99 for general disinfection purpose or 1:49 for highly contaminated area.
2. Chlorine Dioxide.  Used the effervescent EC Disinfectant Tablet for disinfection purpose.

Reader are recommend to find out more about the difference between bleach solution (Sodium Hypochlorite) and Chlorine Dioxide from another relevant article.

Hand Cleaning Sanitizer

Some disinfectant products may be too aggressive for skin.  After you applied the disinfectant product, please pay close attention to the skin to observe if any allergy symptom appears. 

As usual, we recommend 2 hand sanitizer products:

1. Alcohol-based hand spray.  Only select the alcohol concentration within the range 60-80% and make sure it is free from Methanol.
2. Hypochlorous acid-base hand spray.  Hypochlorous acid has proven to have strong oxidation capability.  Choose the Quantum Series of Hand Sanitize Products, it is safe to the individual, effective for hand sanitise.

We have another article with more details about choosing hand sanitizer.

By the way, some may be saying choosing essential plant oil as your personal hygiene products but we would rather consider those as a supplement product.

Household Antiseptic Product for Personal Belongings

We have discussed the method for ordinary environment disinfection and hands sanitise.  How should we sanitizer the personal belongings, such as a bag, watch.  You can always clean up the personal belongings with general disinfectant or detergent.  If you are still very particular about this, you could use an Ozone generator to sanitize the belongings.

In EC Specialties Supplies, from time to time, we are using an ozone generator to sanitize our office.  Hang the personal belonging and it will get sanitize after some time.  You could consider this to sanitize your office too.

There are many household antiseptic products in Malaysia market.  Hopefully, this article helps you to clear up your mind and understand which type of antiseptic products you should obtain suitable for your household sanitising purpose.