Health & Safety Update (August 2010)
Alcohol hand gel cut sickness rates at work
A new study has found that alcohol hand gels have helped to
dramatically reduce illness rates in the workplace.
Researchers found that providing the hand sanitising gels at
work has helped to cut sickness absence taken as a result of common
infectious diseases such as colds and coughs.
The gels, which are widely used in hospitals to prevent the
spread of infections, were given to 129 study participants, who
were instructed to use them five times a day.
Compared with those who continued with their usual hand washing
habits, the workers using the gels took less sick days due to
colds, fever, coughs and diarrhoea.
Over a period of one year, days taken off for colds were cut by
65 per cent, fever by 62 per cent, coughs by more than half and
diarrhoea by 89 per cent. Reports of sickness while at work were
also reduced.
Lead author of the research study Nils-Olaf Hübner, of the
Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, in Greifswald,
Germany, “Hand disinfection can easily be introduced and maintained
as part of daily hand hygiene, acting as an interesting and
cost-efficient method of improving workforce health and
effectiveness.
"It could be shown that hand disinfection has a reducing
influence on the number of episodes of illness for the majority of
the registered symptoms, with the strongest effects for common
cold, coughing, fever and diarrhoea,” he added.