Did You Know?

Tuesday night we had a Relief Society activity about Preparing for a Pandemic. It went really well, mostly thanks to this amazing sister in my ward, Angie, (a nurse) who gave a wonderful and interesting presentation about illnesses, pandemics, and keeping your family healthy. Seriously, she did so good! I was in charge of presenting to the sisters about how to prepare our homes. Do you remember me blogging about that before? You can read this post here to see lists of things you should store. In my preparations, though, I learned something that I think is really interesting and useful.

Did you know that there is a big difference between

sanitizing and disinfecting?

Sanitizing kills bacteria. (Or at least 99.9% of it!)

Disinfecting, however, kills bacteria and viruses.

I always thought those terms meant the same thing. After learning this, I started reading the labels on all my sanitizing household cleaners. None of them kill the cold or flu virus.

Now, I don't think we need to disinfect our houses everyday. But after someone has been sick or in case of a pandemic, we really need to have some disinfectants in our home (I use bleach - including the Clorox disinfecting wipes - and Comet with bleach).

In short, I wanted to share this info, because I always thought sanitizing and disinfecting meant the same thing, and I was surprised to learn otherwise. Now that I know this I will read the labels on the cleaning supplies I buy more carefully, and try to find more disinfectants. I will also make sure that I have something to disinfect in my long-term storage. (Be aware that bleach does start to deteriorate after 6 months. Make sure to rotate it out of your storage.) I thought this was helpful enough to share.

To disinfect a surface: mix 1 part bleach with 9 parts cool water (10% bleach, 90% water)

To disinfect water: filter the water first, or let water sit until all the particles have settled. Then add 2 drops of bleach per quart of water or 8 drops of bleach per gallon of water.