It’s a Sanitizer World: Overuse of Hand Sanitizer in School

“Don’t forget to sanitize before entering and leaving class,” — we’ve all heard it a million times a day from every one of our teachers. 

In addition to the new hallway setup with arrows to direct traffic and help with social distancing, there has been a drastic increase in the amount of hand sanitizing stations throughout East, with one in each and every classroom.

The hand sanitizer is there for our personal protection against germs, not to mention that it’s one of the most straightforward ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19. You just walk up to the dispenser, give your hands a squirt, rub together — then boom, you’re in the green.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Instead, students are using enough hand sanitizer to clean a boat.

When I find myself absentmindedly using the dispenser that extra second or third time during a class, it’s not because I think it will have any drastically better effect than one glob of the stuff, but because it’s become an almost unconscious task.

In all reality, one push of the dispenser is all I need — and the same goes for the other students. The more pumps of sanitizer someone uses in one go, the faster that one bottle will run dry — leaving it empty by the end of the week. Besides, I’m done having my hands smell like a rancid bottle of liquor way more than they have to. 

While there’s no denying the intense need for hand sanitizing in a year like this, we can all be a little more conscientious about how much we use every time we are entering or leaving class. Dousing your hands with it isn’t necessary, and those empty bottles will need to be restocked profusely if we keep it up, not to mention someone could be left without the chance to sanitize.

If you feel the urge to keep clean throughout the day, washing your hands in the bathroom is a great alternative — it proves to be much more effective anyway. 

However, the point still stands. We all need to start laying off the hand sanitizer at school. Just one squirt is enough to leave your hands clean and COVID-19 free, so there’s no reason to go overboard and slather your hands with the cleaner. 

If you want to leave with your hands extra clean, just go wash them in the bathroom or bring your own bottle of sanitizer to attach to your backpack so you don’t have to think about using too much or too little.  

I know I’ll be doing my best to maintain a one-push routine as my small role in making sure sanitizer is readily available for anyone who needs it and that staff members aren’t constantly running around the school to restock everything.