Is Your Alcohol Handrub as Professional as You Are?

These performance standards were originally written for wash-off hand hygiene products and there has been an ongoing debate as to whether leave-on hand hygiene products such as alcohol handrubs can meet these standards.

To investigate the theory that leave-on hand hygiene products are unable to meet the FDA performance standards, a professional-grade isopropyl alcohol handrub was tested in a clinical HCPH study utilizing the FDA testing methodology. The professional-grade isopropyl alcohol handrub not only met the HCPH standard, but exceeded it by achieving a 4.1 log₁₀ reduction after the first wash and a 4.4 log₁₀ reduction after the 10th. Table 1 shows the results of the professional-grade isopropyl alcohol handrub for the first, third, seventh, and 10th contamination/application cycles compared to the proposed FDA performance standards.  

In a previously published article, a household-grade ethyl alcohol handrub was tested in a clinical study using a modified version of a HCPH study by the American Society for Testing and Materials Standard Method E11794-94.² The test product achieved a 3.9 log₁₀ reduction after the first wash, but failed to meet FDA’s 10th wash requirement by achieving only a 2.1 log₁₀ reduction. Figure 1 portrays the HCPH results of the professional-grade and household-grade alcohol handrubs in comparison to FDA’s performance criteria for a HCPH product.