[at-l] Medical Risks of Wilderness Hiking

[jmayer at rochester.rr.com (Jim Mayer)]

Bryan,

What's not real about what I posted?  I think that using the alcohol gel
is real world.  It's easy, environmentally benign, cheap, effective, and
an ounce lasts a LONG time.  Since nothing involving soap is easy in the
backcountry, what's the alternative?

And by the way, those directions aren't for surgical prep washing! 
That's a LOT more involved.

-- Jim

On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 09:58, J Bryan Kramer wrote:
> Let's be real world here, I think a normal wash up with soap will get you
> 99% of the benefits without doing surgical prep washups. LNT is fine but
> again is needs to be adjusted to real world conditions, I know some folks
> would be happy to suffer disease in order to toe the enviro political line
> but I'm not one of them.
> 
> Bryan
> 
> >     * Use warm running water and a mild liquid soap.
> >     * Wet your hands and apply a small amount of soap to your hands.
> >     * Rub your hands together until soapy lather appears. Wash for at
> > least 15 seconds making sure to scrub between your fingers and under
> > your fingernails.
> >     * Rinse your hands under warm running water.
> >     * Dry your hands with a disposable or single-use towel.
> >
> > Give me a break!  A quick scan on the web showed that a huge problem in
> > hospitals is that staff simply don't have TIME to wash their hands!
> >
> > I generally wash up with water and a bandanna (but usually no soap) to
> > remove most of the grime, and then use the alcohol gel before preparing
> > food... when I remember... which isn't always.  I use an "EZ Fill"
> > ziploc to hold the water (it has a flat bottom) and move a little bit
> > away from the stream, but generally not 200 feet if I'm just cleaning up
> > grime.  The same bag, by the way, is good for rinsing out clothes.
> >
> > If I've gotten really disgusting I've been known to use soap, and then I
> > try to do the LNT thing.  Mostly, though, I skip the soap.
> >
> > -- Jim
> >
> >
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