Protecting families from contaminated food and water
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Protecting families from contaminated food and water
Posted in Our Blog on March 8, 2025
This is your friendly reminder to wash your hands to reduce your risk of foodborne illness and other infections like the common cold or flu.
Did you know that the simple act of properly washing your hands can prevent a significant number of infections?
It can!
Studies show that effective and timely hand washing can prevent one in three diarrheal illnesses and one in five respiratory infections.
Despite the significant impact on human health, many people do not know enough about what effective handwashing means. In addition to the physical act of performing the task, knowing when to wash your hands is also important.
Let’s discuss how and when to wash your hands to prevent the spread of illness!
We often overlook all the daily activities we each participate in each day where our hands come into contact with all kinds of harmful germs. Washing your hands after these activities prevents them from making their way into our bodies where they can make us sick and spread illness to others.
A few of the most important times to wash your hands include:
This is not a definitive list by any means. If at any point you feel your hands may be contaminated, err on the side of caution and give them a good wash.
Since we are talking about foodborne illness here though, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about handwashing while cooking.
A study conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service conducted a study on this very subject. They observed participants cooking in a test kitchen.
The results were scary!
Participants either washed their hands incorrectly (ineffectively) or failed to wash them at all over 95% of the time they should have. Consequently, nearly half of all participants cross-contaminated spice containers because they didn’t adequately wash their hands. A move that can cause significant and long-term consequences for cross-contamination events in a home kitchen.
Always wash your hands before, during, and after preparing any food. You should also wash your hands after touching raw meat, poultry, and seafood. Eggs too!
Not only is washing your hands at the appropriate times important. So is performing the seemingly simple act correctly and effectively.
Keep yourself and your family healthy by reducing the spread of germs. Follow these five steps to effectively wash your hands every time. While I am knowledgeable in this field, I am by far no expert. So the following steps were taken from people who ARE experts in this area.
Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the faucet, and apply soap.
Wetting your hands helps prep them for the soap. It allows the soap to better coat all areas of your hands for more effective coverage. While warm water is better, even cold or cool water can be effective.
An antimicrobial soap can be a better option. But it isn’t necessary for effective hand washing.
Lather your hands by rubbing them together with soap. Move the soap around on the back of your hands, between your fingers, and underneath your fingernails.
It is important for soap to coat all areas of the hand to wash your hands effectively.
Be sure to scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. An easy way to do this is to hum the “Happy Birthday” song twice from beginning to end. As long as you aren’t rushing through the tune, it should be about 20 seconds.
Fun to do and easy to remember.
After you have wet your hands, lathered them up, and scrubbed them well (a minimum of 20 seconds courtesy of the Happy Birthday song) it is now time to rinse.
Rinse your hands well under clean, running water. This can also be warm or cold water. However, warm is always preferred. You may need to rub your hands a bit more to remove all the soap.
Up next is the final step. But just like every other step, its execution is equally important. Dry your hands with a clean towel. Or you could air dry them instead.
Selecting something appropriate to dry your hands is very important. You just went through the effort to remove harmful germs from your hands. You don’t want to instantly reapply them with a dirty towel.
Don’t dry your hands with a towel you have used to clean up messes or have used after handling food (especially higher risk foods like raw meat or seafood). If nothing appropriate is available, allow them to air dry.
Sometimes you just don’t have the opportunity to wash your hands. What are you supposed to do if there is no sink in sight?
If you do not have access to soap and clean water to effectively wash your hands, keep hand sanitizer available.
Be sure that the hand sanitizer contains at least 60% alcohol to truly sanitize you hands.
It is not always the best solution. This is because hand sanitizers may not be able to kill all of the germs on your hands. Also, they are not as effective if your hands are visibly dirty or greasy. Most hand sanitizers cannot penetrate grime or effectively coat overly dirty hands.
When working in the kitchen, it is far better to wash your hands with soap and water than opt for this alternative solution.
You have (hopefully) washed your hands countless times in your lifetime. How close were you to the step-by-step guide to how experts say to effectively wash your hands? Did you learn anything new?
If you’d like to know more about food safety topics in the news, like “Wash Your Hands to Reduce Risk of Foodborne Illness,” check out the Make Food Safe Blog. We regularly update trending topics, foodborne infections in the news, recalls, and more! Stay tuned for quality information to help keep your family safe, while The Lange Law Firm, PLLC strives to Make Food Safe!
By: Heather Van Tassell (contributing writer, non-lawyer)