TY - JOUR TI - Addressing challenges and gaps in the hand hygiene literature using novel quantitative approaches DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3C24Z8W PY - 2015 AB - This research was undertaken to develop a cause and effect understanding of the variables that affect hand washing, a critical facet in food safety and public health. Many regulations appear to have been made without sufficient scientific foundational evidence to back up justify these regulations, because of this, many basic aspects of handwashing are still being debated. The studies in this dissertation attempted to clarify several main concepts in hand washing. Specifically, which parts of a hand wash are most important, is soap necessary for a hand wash, handwash communication consistent, what characteristics of the surfactant are important for soap formulation, and what is the current state of hand sanitizer published literature. Chapter II main finding was that handwash techniques communicated by signs and posters varies greatly. Chapter III is a meta-analysis of the published hand sanitizer literature, and had several key findings. First, a significant difference between ethanol and isopropanol based hand sanitizer effectiveness for bacteria (p=<0.05), but not for viruses (p>0.05) was observed. Second, alcohol-based hand sanitizers were more effective (p<0.05) than those based on other antimicrobials for bacteria, but the same statistical difference was not observed for viruses (p>0.05). Finally, different experimental protocols return significantly different results (p<0.05), and care must be taken when comparing hand sanitizer studies. Chapters IV and V focused on handwash technique and soap use, which found that hand lathering time, soap volume, and water temperature did not significantly change the microbial reduction from the handwash (p>0.05), but that drying method, use of soap, and total wash time did (p<0.05). Lastly, Chapter VI results suggest that soap formulations, specifically the type and concentration of surfactant used, has a significant influence (p<0.05) on the effectiveness of a soap product. These results from these studies will be used in future risk modeling and soap product development to ideally promote better formulation, better hand wash compliance, and evidenced based hand hygiene regulations. KW - Food Science KW - Hand--Care and hygiene KW - Hand washing LA - eng ER -