Herewith, a simple guide to washing your hands, depending on what you have available.
The key concept to remember is that it is neither soap nor hot water that cleans your hands of bacteria, but rather the mechanical scrubbing action of your preferred method.
A Sink With Soap & Water
Wet your hands, with water (as hot as you can stand, if available, cold otherwise). Use soap if available to lather up. Get not just your palms, but your fingers (and between them), the backs of your hands and up to the wrists. If you need your hands especially clean, scrape under your fingernails and get the top of each individual nail bed. ("Little petri dishes" is what one microbiologist friend calls them.) Scrub briskly but not hard for at least twenty seconds, the 'Happy Birthday' song twice.
"Happy birthday to germs, happy birthday to germs, don't want to take you home _to my family_, happy birthday to germs." Twice.
Then rinse. From this point forward, try not to touch anything in the sink area. Turn off the water with an elbow or a paper towel. Use an air dryer if available.
Just Water
Pour a little on your hands to wet them. Then pour a little more water as if the water were soap. Follow the advice above. Rinse one last time. Shake your hands a little to air dry.
Hand Sanitizer
Hand sanitizer is awesome, but it does not take the place of washing your hands. Hand sanitizer on particles of poop is now scented poop. Your hands need to be clean first.
Nothing
Think for a minute. Is there any water around? How about a piece of cloth? Or a napkin or paper towel? You can scrub your hands with any of these without water. You wipe more, but not as hard.
Really, Nothing
Look for clean sand or soil. You can scrub your hands with either. It may sound strange to 'clean' your hands with dirt, but presumably there is a reason you are needing your hands clean, and clean dirt is better than some other things that routinely get on your hands.
This is particularly important before meals, after using the restroom, before working with clean or potable water, before (if possible) and always after first aid, and whenever removing medical-type nitrile or latex gloves.
A few cheap ways of having water around, if you don't have a sink:
- A plastic bottle of water, refilled from tap or from collected rain water. This can be a small bottle or a big one. If you plan to use it only for handwashing, mark the bottle somehow to avoid cross contamination. Cost about $1.
| - There is a standard 2.5 gallon water jug sold at stores that has a built in pull-out tap. There is a little divot in the top intended to make a small vent hole with the point of a knife. These are not supposed to be refillable, but you can cut a larger flap in the top after the store bought water is used, presumably for drinking, and refill through that. Cost about $3.
- A 5 gallon jug with a mechanical pump. This totals under $20 at WalMart. This is the best option for a field handwashing station. Label the jug accordingly if there is any danger someone might drink from it.
- Of course, there are custom sink systems out there for campers. A typical RV uses a 12 volt battery to run a pump to provide water on tap that drains to a 'grey water' tank. You could build such a system with aquarium parts if you really wanted to.
Note: water used for drinking, brushing teeth, and shaving (as this creates micro breaks in the skin) should be potable drinking-quality water. More about this in future posts.
Water used for handwashing or body washing can be of lesser quality, such as fresh rainwater, tapwater stored without paying attention to quality, or bottled water that has sat in plastic for six months or more, but should not have been exposed to chemicals, 'gray water' or worse. Note that some field handwashing stations are labled "NON POTABLE WATER, DO NOT DRINK." These are usually filled with a garden hose and the idea is to avoid cross contamination.
Happy handwashing!
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