Hand Sanitizer

[Shelby]

Is hand sanitizer good enough to use between handling quarantined herps? If not, what is?

[sophie42204]

I would prefer to wash my hands in really hot water w/antibacterial soap or even a mild bleach solution (making sure to rinse very, very, well) just to be on the safe side.

[Adam_Wysocki]

Not good enough for me .... Soap and hot water! (i actually also use betadyne, but it's hell on the skin) .... When working with my quarentined animals I use surgical grade gloves, but I'm very anal retentive about things like that.

It's actually a good idea to wash your hands when moving from animal to animal even with the non-quarentined herps in your collection (for a small collection at least). With my collection I was my hands when moving from rack to rack because doing it for each animal would be impractical.

-adam

[Shelby]

Betadine is nasty.

Oh how I wish there was a sink up here.. Do you sit there with a watch and time yourself for the 30 seconds or whatever you're supposed to scrub your hands for to kill all germs? (I am being serious.. lol)

Where do you get surgical grade gloves? I assume they're not the same kind you see in the grocery store.

[Brandon.O]

I use hot water and antibacterial soap then i rinse very well.

I also handle my "established" (or the snakes ive had longer) snakes first.

[Shelby]

I can get extremely paranoid about germs when it comes to my animals. Ok I'm thinking, I've touched one of my quarantined animals, so I go downstairs to wash my hands, but I have to touch the dial on the faucet to turn it on, and after I've washed my hands I have to touch it again to turn it off, thereby potentially recontaminating my hands. What do you think? Am I also anal retentive? :?

[Brandon.O]

Use a glove or a towel to turn the faucet off then.......lol

[Shelby]

Oh but how do I know I didn't touch the towel before when my hands could have been dirty?

Ok fine fine I'll just use my elbow to turn the darn faucet off.

[Brandon.O]

Hahah sounds like a plan

You could also wash the faucet ???

[mlededee]

it has been proven that there are more germs on the faucet in a public restroom than there are on the toilet seat. so, shelby, your concerns are not so far off. you can dry your hands with a paper towel, and then use the towel to turn off the faucet. that way your clean hands never touch the faucet, regardless of what might be on it.