It seems impossible, but excess hygiene or do-it-yourself hygiene can also hurt. Because disinfectants or detergents are not fresh water: they can pollute, poison or alter the level of “good” bacteria. What was reported by the main US health surveillance center, the CDC in Atlanta, is alarming: with Covid the number of disinfectant poisoning has increased by 20%. It is well known that an overflowing and useless use of antibiotics is commonly made, with the consequence that the germs “get used to” and become insensitive and invulnerable; and the coronavirus is not affected at all by the use of antibiotics, which kill bacteria but not viruses. Even carpet disinfectants to clean the homes of healthy people from presumed germs are useless.
Then came the fashion of using ultraviolet lamps, but exposure to UV-C rays is dangerous for living beings, so much so that approved sunglasses must not let them pass and tanning lamps must not produce them. . On this improper use (the proper use is to use them in the laboratory to sterilize instruments) various international agencies have expressed their opinion, including the Istituto Superiore di Sanità: “Traditional systems with UV-C lamps installed on the wall or ceiling, in lack of protection for the user from exposure, represent a potential hazard […] Therefore, it is essential that the lamp is switched on only if the presence of people in the irradiation area is excluded ».
READ Coronavirus: WHO, hand hygiene saves lives
Excess hygiene is nothing new but today, with the fear of Covid, it appears more and more like a mania or a fashion, and becomes pollution, destruction of “friendly” bacterial flora or the cause of allergies. And it causes the so-called “SUV effect”: just as those who drive an SUV lower their attention to driving more than others because they feel safe from being damaged by a possible accident, so those who abound in the use of disinfectants and germicidal lamps feel safer, but ends up lowering the guard on basic hygiene rules, such as washing hands that you think you can bypass with a spray of disinfectant every now and then or installing a UV-C lamp.
So it must be reiterated that hygiene is fundamental, and by hygiene we mean thorough cleaning, not excessive use of substances that no one has prescribed. And in the Covid era (but even if you have the flu or a cough) hygiene also means not getting close to the elderly, small children, pregnant women and the chronically ill.
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In short, it is essentially about washing your hands and keeping your distance: what was called “good education”. But it seems to have gotten lost along the way if it is to be enforced by law.
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