The World Health Organisation (WHO) tell us that one of the best ways to protect ourselves from contracting Covid-19 is to wash our hands with soap and water ...often!
And who are we to disagree with that?
(As you know, we make soap... beautiful, natural, cold processed soap)
Plus in this pandemic environment our health and..dare we be dramatic and say that even our lives.. depend on it!
So why is soap so effective against COVID-19?
Here's what UNESCO has to say :
Water alone may rinse off dirt, but viruses and bacteria are so small they often need chemical and mechanical intervention to get their sticky nanoparticles out of the crevices that make up our unique fingerprints.
That’s why soap is so important. It’s made for this job.
Give soap 20 seconds, at least, of thorough scrubbing and the pin-shaped soap molecules will penetrate the types of bacteria and viruses, including COVID-19, that protect themselves with an oily lipid membrane.
Like a nail popping a tire, the water-repelling end of the soap molecule, a hydrophobic tail that can bond with oil and fats, stabs COVID-19 and leaves the virus a deflated and broken sack of RNA cells.
And while alcohol can also break an oily membrane, washing with soap has the added benefit of physically removing even tougher to break viruses and bacteria from the skin.
This is thanks to the dual nature of soap molecules. As the hydrophilic, or water-loving, heads reach out to bond with the water, the tails turn inwards to protect themselves from the water and by doing so, scoop up anything they catch in tiny soap bubble cages called micelles.
Scrubbing all parts of your hands and wrists vigorously, with a sudsy lather, is key to locking these invading particles away for good - and washing them down the drain.
And whether the water is cold or warm doesn’t matter, so long as it’s soapy.
Ref: https://en.unesco.org/news/how-soap-kills-covid-19-hands
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