The IAA One Minute Blog

With cold weather just around the corner, it's time to start preparing to battle off colds. Keeping your hands clean is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of infection and illness.

When to Wash Your Hands

Clean hands can stop germs from spreading from one person to another and throughout the entire community. It is important to remember the times when your hands need to be washed:

• Before, during and after preparing food
• Before eating food
• Before and after treating a cut or wound
• Before and after caring for someone who is sick
• After using the bathroom
• After changing a diaper or cleaning up after a child who has just used the bathroom
• After blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
• After touching an animal, animal feed or animal waste
• After touching garbage
  

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce the number of germs on them. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol based sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.

The Science of Hand Washing

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the simple act of hand washing is the single most important means of preventing the spread of viral and bacterial infections. The best way to wash your hands is to:

1. Wet your hands with clean running water (hot or cold) and apply soap.
2. Rub your hands together to make a lather and scrub them well; be sure to scrub the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
3. Continue rubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds (as long as it takes for you to sing "Happy Birthday" twice).
4. Rinse your hands well under running water.
5. Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry.
   

Hand washing is especially important for children in childcare settings. Parents can help keep their families healthy by:

• Teaching their children good hand washing technique
• Reminding their kids to wash their hands
• Washing their own hands with their kids
  

According to the American Cleaning Institute, which represents the U.S. cleaning products industry, children need to wash up more often at school, and parents need to set a better hand washing example.

How Germs are Spread

Many common cold viruses and gastrointestinal bugs only need 36 to 96 hours to incubate. For germs to spread from one person to another, three things must happen:

1. Germs must be present: A person carries the germs; the germs are in the air or on a surface; or in bodily fluids such as mucus from the person's nose, a discharge from the eye or saliva from the mouth.
2. A person who is not immune to germs comes into contact with them: This happens when you touch a computer keyboard or mouse after someone with a cold or illness has used it. It can happen when you use a telephone, after someone who is sick has touched it, when you kiss an ill person or when you're in the path of someone's sneeze or cough.
3. This point of contact happens in a way that leads to infection: In other words, as you touch your face, mouth, and nose or rub your eyes with unwashed hands, the germs enter your body.
   

Colds are spread mainly through respiratory droplets of cough and sneezes when someone has a cold. Yet this illness can be avoided by washing your hands. Illnesses that can be prevented by hand washing are:

• Colds
  
• Food poisoning
• Hepatitis A
• Influenza
• Rotavirus
  

Some viruses and bacteria can live several hours on hard surfaces like cafeteria tables, telephone receivers, computer keyboards, and doorknobs.

What IAA has to Say

Insurance Administrator of America wants you to stay healthy and the best way to do that is by washing your hands. It only takes a few seconds and it can help you in the long run. So when your co-workers are fighting off colds this winter, remember what IAA had to say. With IAA one call does it all.

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