How to thoroughly and safely decontaminate your home without exposing yourself to too much disinfectant
- Hygiene is more important than ever as cities work to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus and trips to the grocery store or other public places can involve a rigorous disinfecting routine.
- You may be tempted to spray everything you own with cleaning chemicals, but that can do more harm than good, according to an expert.
- Keep things clean without overdoing it by prioritizing high-touch surfaces, avoiding harsh chemicals, and knowing when to use soap, alcohol, bleach for safe and optimal cleansing.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
As public health experts keep emphasizing, the best ways to avoid contracting the novel coronavirus are to stay home and stay clean, by washing your hands and cleaning any communal surfaces.
For those who don't go out much, or aren't medics exposed to coronavirus patients, risk is low, but it's possible to be a carrier of the virus without symptoms, and to pick it up from touching a contaminated surface at the grocery store, so it's a good idea to maintain a regular cleaning routine.
It's not necessary to scrub every surface of your home and living area with harsh chemicals, according to Erica Hartmann, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University. In fact, doing so cause health problems later on because some microbes are beneficial.
"We should really be thinking about how and why we clean." Hartmann told Insider in an interview. "The coronavirus is public enemy number one right now but that doesn't mean all microbes are bad. Other microbes were there first and will still be there after."
Good hygiene is an important part of spreading contaminants, including the coronavirus — here's how to keep things clean without over-doing it.
Focus on surfaces that you touch most frequently
Although we often don't like to think about it, there are microbes "everywhere, all the time," Hartmann said. "They're on us, they're inside us, some of them help us, and we take them everywhere."
So, don't try to make your goal to wipe out all microbial life in your house. That's not possible, desirable or necessary, Hartmann explained.
Instead, focus on tackling potentially harmful microbes, and only on surfaces that you frequently come into contact with.
High-touch surfaces like countertops, door handles, arm rests and the like should be high-priority. Something like your floor, however, is not.
"If something is just sitting there and you're not interacting with it, you don't have to worry about it," Hartmann said.
Wipe things down before you wash them, so you don't have to use so much cleaning product
Hartmann recommends an order of operations when it comes to cleaning.
First, physically remove any dirt or grime, then wash with soap and water — it will clean more effectively that way, and it means that, if you need to sanitize with alcohol, bleach, or something stronger, you won't need to use so much.
To determine how thoroughly you need to clean something, consider what it's come into contact with. Items that might have come into contact with coughs or sneezes, for instances, could warrant a more thorough cleaning.
Cleaning things properly takes time.
When applying disinfectants, let them work for a period of time for wiping them off. For bleach, that means about 10 minutes, Hartmann said. For other cleaning products, always check the product label and follow all the manufacturer's instructions.
Avoid harsh chemicals when soap and water will do
Consider disinfection as a last resort, Hartmann said. Whenever you can clean something with soap and water, do so.
It's important to remember that the coronavirus is vulnerable to simple solutions like soap, alcohol and bleach, so it's not always necessary to go after it with industrial cleaning products.
"The same way soap can dissolve grease on dirty pan, it can dissolve the membrane around bacteria and envelop viruses," Hartmann said, including the novel coronavirus. "Alcohol works much the same way, dissolving organic membranes. Bleach is a little more reactive, set up a whole chain that's going to destroy everything."
Hartmann compared it to cleaning your kitchen cutting board after food prep: if you've just been slicing bread, it may be enough to wipe off the crumbs to get it tidied up, but if you've been prepping raw chicken, a deeper clean is necessary.
If it needs it, consider alcohol or bleach solutions, but be sure to dilute them before using. Anyone who's accidentally used excess bleach will remember the stinging, burning eyes, throat, and skin that can result. So, if you are using something reactive, such as bleach, wear gloves and be sure to clean in a well-ventilated area.
Heavy-duty cleaning materials can cause more harm than good
If you use anything stronger, like heavy-duty antibacterial disinfectants, you could risk lingering and possibly unpleasant after-effects, since other microbes exposed to the chemicals could develop a resistance, becoming harder to kill in the future.
"Soap, alcohol and bleach, they do their job and go away," Hartmann said. "Antibacterials have added chemicals that stick around in the environment for a long time. What happens is that bacteria might come into contact with and develop antibacterial resistances strategies."
That could potentially give rise to nastier versions of bacteria that are hazardous to our health, and antibiotic resistance one of the leading health challenges worldwide, she added. Although the coronavirus is unlikely to develop a resistance (since again, viruses of that kind are easy to kill with soap and other products), it's important to remember that environmental health will still be an issue once this particular pandemic has passed.
"There are microbes everywhere all the time, this was true before the coronavirus and will be true after," Hartmann said.
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