Hand hygiene with hand sanitizer versus handwashing: what are the planetary health consequences?
Carbon footprint
Environment
Hand gel
Hand sanitizer
Industrial ecology
Planet
Planetary health
Journal
Environmental science and pollution research international
ISSN: 1614-7499
Titre abrégé: Environ Sci Pollut Res Int
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 9441769
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Jul 2022
Jul 2022
Historique:
received:
01
07
2021
accepted:
24
01
2022
pubmed:
25
2
2022
medline:
9
7
2022
entrez:
24
2
2022
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
In order to reduce the transmission of pathogens, and COVID-19, WHO and NHS England recommend hand washing (HW) and/or the use of hand sanitizer (HS). The planetary health consequences of these different methods of hand hygiene have not been quantified. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to compare the environmental impact of the UK population practising increased levels of hand hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic for 1 year. Washing hands with soap and water was compared to using hand sanitizer (both ethanol and isopropanol based sanitizers were studied). The isopropanol-based HS had the lowest environmental impact in 14 out of the 16 impact categories used in this study. For climate change, hand hygiene using isopropanol HS produced the equivalent of 1060 million kg CO
Identifiants
pubmed: 35199264
doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-18918-4
pii: 10.1007/s11356-022-18918-4
pmc: PMC8865176
doi:
Substances chimiques
Hand Sanitizers
0
Soaps
0
Water
059QF0KO0R
Ethanol
3K9958V90M
2-Propanol
ND2M416302
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
48736-48747Informations de copyright
© 2022. The Author(s).
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