Many people are gloving both hands to go shopping, handling everything in their environments equally, and then discarding their gloves. This method, which seems to be effective on the surface, is unfortunately an effective way to turn gloves into a source of viral transmission, enabling virus from door handles and PIN pads to move to cell phones, keys, forearms, and faces, where it can make us sick.
Shopping for groceries using a clean hand/dirty hand technique will far more effectively prevent viral transmission. You will need only one disposable glove, a disinfectant wipe, some hand sanitizer, some soap, and running water. Your one glove provides a constant visual and tactile reminder that will help prevent cross-contamination. And because a second glove serves no purpose other than confusion, your limited PPE resources will be conserved.
The risk of airborne transmission is not yet fully understood, but you may also want a face covering or mask, depending on contagion in your area and your personal risks.
ALERT!
If you have a cough or a fever,
or anyone else in your household has a cough or a fever,
please do not do your own shopping.
Find someone else to shop for you.
Before you attempt this technique, wash your hands thoroughly and sanitize all the things you have touched and taken with you and potentially contaminated on previous shopping trips--cell phone, keys, car door handles, steering wheel and controls, debit cards, wallet, purse, and so forth. Use a viral disinfectant to wipe everything down. Let your things air dry, and then wash your hands again.
From now on, only your clean hand will touch your things. Your "dirty hand", which might be contaminated with viral particles, will not touch them again until you are back in your own personal space. Your things will live in your environment, where only healthy bacteria live, uncontaminated by the viral particles that may be infecting your community, and they will not need to be disinfected repeatedly.
You are already organizing your needs so that you don't need to shop more often than every week or every other week, so bring your shopping list, your one disposable glove, and your hand sanitizer and head for the store. When you arrive, put a glove on your "dirty hand." Most people will be more comfortable putting a glove on their dominant hand and regarding that hand as dirty, but you can choose either hand. From this point on, until you sanitize at the end of your shopping trip, your gloved hand will be your dirty hand. Your dirty hand will touch any object or surface that is likely to be contaminated in your world--door handles, refrigerators, freezers, and PIN pads.
Your ungloved hand will be your clean hand.Your clean hand will touch all the things that already belong to you--your face, your phone, your keys, your wallet, and your debit card. After you use your disinfectant wipe to disinfect your shopping cart handle, your clean hand will only touch it to one side of center and your dirty hand will only touch it to the other side of center.
You will need to make an executive decision regarding your groceries. If contagion is low in your area, and you expect that your groceries are touched only minimally by others, you may decide to use your clean hand to touch only the groceries that you will buy and then consider those groceries clean when it is time to put them away. However, if contagion is high in your area, you may decide to use only your dirty hand to touch only the groceries that you will buy and then consider those groceries dirty when it is time to put them away.
As you enter the store and collect your purchases, your ungloved clean hand and your gloved dirty hand will remind you continually that there are clean things that only you will handle and dirty things that may have been handled by dozens of other people before you. Your clean hand touches only your own clean items, perhaps including your own groceries, and your dirty hand touches only things that have a far greater potential to be contaminated with virus.
Your clean hand can brush the hair out of your eyes. Your dirty hand can't. Your clean hand can handle your cell phone, and your shopping list. Your dirty hand can't. When it is time to pay, your clean hand touches your debit card, and your dirty hand touches the PIN pad.
If you have done a risk assessment of your environment, and you are considering your groceries clean, complete your shopping trip as follows:
- Take your groceries to your car.
- Slip a finger from your clean hand, between your glove and the wrist of your dirty hand, and use one finger to pull it off, turning it inside out.
- Put your dirty glove directly into a trash receptacle.
- Sanitize both hands.
- Put your groceries in your car.
- Remove your mask if you wore one.
- Drive home
- Walk directly into your house and wash your hands with soap and water.
- Collect your groceries and put them away, just as you always have.
If your risk assessment suggests that you should consider your groceries dirty, complete your trip as follows:
- Take your groceries to your car.
- Open your trunk with your clean hand.
- Unload your groceries with your dirty hand.
- Close your trunk with your clean hand.
- Slip a finger from your clean hand, between your glove and the wrist of your dirty hand, and use one finger to pull it off, turning it inside out.
- Put your dirty glove directly into a trash receptacle.
- Sanitize both hands.
- Remove your mask if you wore one.
- Drive home.
- Wash your hands with soap and water.
- Find the video below for information on how to sanitize your groceries, supplementing with clean hand/dirty hand technique as needed.
With this information, you're also prepared to make a good decision about putting your groceries on a conveyor belt or using self-checkout where it's available.
See the videos I've posted below and know that you've got this!
Valerie
See the videos I've posted below and know that you've got this!
Valerie
Glad to see you are blogging again!
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