Search
Related Links

 

 

Informative Articles

Are Stomach Ulcers Serious?
Does your stomach hurt frequently? Does the pain ever wake you up at night? Do you vomit undigested food or blood? If you can answer "yes" to these questions or have experienced other symptoms associated with stomach discomfort, you may have stomach...

Cialis – The Latest In Ed Medicine
Erectile Dysfunction is defined as the consistent inability to attain and maintain an erection sufficient for sexual intercourse. ED affects an estimated 189 million men worldwide. Experts believe that 80 percent to 90 percent of ED cases are...

Does Your Income Affect Your Health?
Our level of income directly affects our health. Did you know that? How much money you make helps to determine how healthy you will be. Doesn't really make sense, if you don't' look at the broader picture. In the big picture, however, here is the...

Permanent Weight Loss & Your Subconscious Pictures
Copyright 2005 Burris MIND/FITNESS The second component of Burris MIND/FITNESS is your subconscious pictures. I will explain how to replace your negative subconscious images into positive images through the practice of controlled visualization....

STRESS FACTS
STRESS FACTS * * * * * Myth# Stress induced fatigue is unavoidable in today's hectic 24/7 lifestyle! - Most health practitioners now recognize that stress is a major factor in most cases of poor health, resulting in work absenteeism, poor...

 
Are You Cleaning Or Disinfecting?

One of the most frequently asked questions regarding the effects of cleaning is whether cleaning products kill germs, or in what extent micro-organisms can be aniquilated by these products. The misconception comes from the amount of disinformation arriving to us by a variety of media.

Even some cleaning products advertising claim that the products kill bacteria, or germs, or whatever. By doing a quick research on the Internet I have found sentences like:

"Most soap will adequately kill germs" .... This concept is clearly WRONG!

The right sentence would be: Most soap will adequately remove germs. Soap isn't designed to kill bacteria.

Disinfectants contain antimicrobial agents, such as pine oil, sodium hypochlorite, quaternary ammonium compounds or phenols, which kill bacteria and viruses on surfaces. A surface should be free of heavy soil for effective disinfection.

Disinfectant cleaners contain surfactants and builders to remove soil in addition to antimicrobial agents to kill germs. Therefore, they are effective at cleaning surfaces as well as killing germs. Label instructions must be followed to assure disinfectancy.

In order to make disinfectancy claims, disinfectant products must be tested for efficacy and registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Disinfection: treatment to destroy harmful micro-organisms.

Disinfectant: An agent, such as heat, radiation, or a chemical, that destroys, neutralizes, or inhibits the growth of disease-carrying micro-organisms. Disinfection reduces the number of harmful bacteria to safe levels.

Cleaning: the act of making something clean. Cleaning means the removal of soil, food residue, dirt, greases and other unwanted materials. In order to clean properly, energy has to be applied in the form of heat energy (hot water or steam), chemical energy (detergents) or physical energy (manual labor). Usually a combination of two or more forms of energy is used.

Disinfectants do not have cleaning properties. It is necessary to clean items or surfaces before using disinfectants, mainly because disinfectants are inhibited and neutralized in the presence


of organic substances. Even more, many people go wrong when cleaning as they do not carry out disinfection properly or they re-contaminate disinfected surfaces, for example by using dirty cloths to rinse.

Antibacterial cleaning products abound, from soaps and lotions to kitchen and bathroom cleaners. A recent survey has shown that more than 75% of all liquid hand soaps and nearly 30% of bar soaps for sale nationally contain antibacterial agents. This may seem like good news, but recent research has suggested that some antibacterial agents contained in soaps may facilitate the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Not all products are equal. Some products contain an actual antibiotic, while other products such as household cleaners contain chemicals, most often bleach or quaternary ammonium compounds that kill bacteria but don't necessarily select for multi-resistant germs.

Reading the product label to determine the active ingredient will give you an idea of the directions and of the safety precautions as well. While most people may guess that "active ingredients" are the things that make the product do its job, like killing germs or weeds or disinfecting surfaces, have you ever wondered what "inert" or "other ingredients" are? They aren't just water, and they don't just sit there and do nothing. They may include solvents that dissolve other additives; emulsifiers, which keep other ingredients suspended in a liquid so that they will apply evenly; fragrances and perfumes, to make them smell more attractive; and a host of other things, like surfactants and detergents, designed to make the product stay where you put it and work better when it is applied.

Those "other ingredients" can be part of the reason that a product carries a signal word to encourage you to use it with care, and some of the first aid or precautionary language may be there to help prevent those ingredients from contributing to risk of injury or damage.

About the author:

Jose Rossello, M.D., Ph.D., Specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Promotes the use of natural and safe cleaning products. CEO, Natural Cleaning Products

 

National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health
Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine offers access to health information for consumer, patient, and physicians ...
www.nlm.nih.gov
 
Health and Medical Information produced by doctors - MedicineNet.com
Doctor-produced health and medical information written for you to make informed decisions about your health concerns.
www.medicinenet.com
 
Medicine in the Yahoo! Directory
Collection of sites for health professionals, with sections on specific disciplines, organizations, continuing education, conferences, publications, ...
dir.yahoo.com
 
MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications.
medlineplus.gov
 
Medicine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medicine is a branch of health science and the sector of public life ... The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the ...
en.wikipedia.org
 
Journal Home - Nature Medicine
Nature Medicine has a vacancy for a Locum Assistant Editor for six months. The position involves working in all aspects of the editorial process, ...
www.nature.com
 
The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on ...
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial ...
content.nejm.org
 
eMedicine Clinical Knowledge Base
eMedicine features up-to-date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical journals, online physician reference textbooks, and a full-text article database in 62 ...
www.emedicine.com
 
Open Directory - Health: Medicine
the entire directory, only in Health/Medicine. Top: Health: Medicine (11429). Description · Medical Specialties (4888); Surgery (2265) ...
dmoz.org
 
the www virtual library biosciences medicine
www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/wwwvl/ - Similar pages
 
Medicine - home
Bimonthly journal covering the latest results in clinical investigation relevant to hospital and office practice.
www.md-journal.com
 
Institute of Medicine
The Institute of Medicine serves as adviser to the nation to improve health.
www.iom.edu
 
ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News
Medical Research News. Health news on everything from cancer to nutrition. Full-text, images, updated daily.
www.sciencedaily.com
 
Google Directory - Health > Medicine
Search only in Medicine Search the Web. Medicine. Health > Medicine, Go to Directory Home. Categories. Alternative Medicine (6308) Basic Sciences (66) ...
www.google.com
 
the world wide web virtual library biosciences medicine
www.mcb.harvard.edu/biopages/medicine.html - Similar pages
 
PLoS Medicine - A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal
PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published ... Every issue of PLoS Medicine contains a selection of readers' responses. ...
medicine.plosjournals.org
 
Medicine On-Line - Medicine Online -The International Medical Journal
Medicine Online - independent and peer reviewed journal published by Priory Medical Journals - priory.com.
www.priory.com
 
Entrez PubMed
PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
Stanford University School of Medicine
Home Page of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
med.stanford.edu
 
Medicine OnLine
Meds.com offers medical information and education on cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia) and HIV / AIDS for patients, ...
www.meds.com