Put Disinfecting Wipes on Back-to-School Lists

Germs are not on back-to-school lists, but kids bring them on the first day anyways. Children get sick more often than adults and easily spread germs to their teachers and peers at school. Children also touch more surfaces than adults, and the majority of children don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom^1,2. It’s no wonder that teachers are exposed to 7 times more bacteria per square inch than doctors¹.

When kids share germs, teachers and students can get sick and miss more school days. This can ultimately cost the school money in lost funding due to student absences or from paying substitute teachers. At worst, if too many children are absent due to illness, schools may even close for days to weeks to prevent a larger outbreak, which happens in more than 10 school districts in the US every year³.

How Germs Can Spread in Classrooms

Let’s think about a typical day for a student who came to school with a slight cold: The child enters the classroom and wipes his nose on his hand before putting his backpack in his cubby. Along the way, he touches all the other cubbies. Then he bounces his hand on a few other students’ desks on his way to his own desk. During class he drops his pencil and his neighbor picks it up and hands it back to him. While the teacher walks around, she stops at his desk and uses his pencil to help him with the lesson. He takes a bathroom break and on his way to the bathroom, he drags his hands along the walls and door handles and touches every door in the bathroom to find a stall that is open. He doesn’t wash his hands on his way back to class.

We can see that in a short amount of time, one sick student can spread germs to many surfaces in his own classroom and in other spaces. In fact, children can touch and retouch 300 surfaces in as little as 30 minutes1. It doesn’t take long for germs to spread on classroom surfaces. Ideally, all students would use good hand hygiene and avoid touching their faces, but that’s just not how children operate! Disinfecting wipes used throughout the day on hard, non-porous surfaces when the students are not at their desks is an effective way to help prevent the spread of these illness-causing germs. In one study, we found that enhanced classroom disinfection reduced absenteeism by 14%⁴.

Disinfecting Wipes Can Prevent the Spread of Illness Causing Germs on Surfaces

Disinfecting wipes are one of the most frequently requested items on back-to-school lists for good reason – they are the perfect tool to help teachers and staff disinfect surfaces during the day and to quickly clean up messes. If you are asking parents to provide wipes, provide specific suggestions for brands and types based on the following features:

1. Disinfect important school pathogens. At minimum, choose disinfecting wipes that can kill cold and flu viruses, and SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus). Ideally, the disinfecting wipe you choose should also kill HIV and HBV – not because these pathogens spread in schools, but because this is what OSHA requires for cleaning up any blood and body fluid messes. Cuts and scrapes happen often in schools, so this is important! Finally, in cases of stomach flu, you will want to use a wipe that can kill Norovirus (you may see this on the label as Feline Calicivirus). Norovirus can infect other people very easily and it doesn’t take much for another person to get sick.
2. Can clean AND disinfect to handle messes. Not all disinfecting wipes are good at cleaning surfaces. For example, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are great at killing germs on hands, and so are alcohol-based disinfecting wipes. But alcohol-based disinfecting wipes are not as good at cleaning sticky messes, dirt, grime, and others. Look for a disinfecting wipe that also cleans and has cleaning instructions on the label.
3. User-friendly and requires no personal protective equipment. Disinfecting wipes in schools will mostly be used by teachers and maybe some administrative staff. Since teachers and admins are not trained cleaning professionals, they aren’t as knowledgeable about how to properly use disinfectants and personal protective equipment (PPE), so it is important to choose wipes that can be used without PPE. In some cases (and for some school districts) you may also want to choose an eco-conscious disinfecting wipe, like EPA Design for the Environment-certified wipes for an effective product that is more eco-conscious. All EPA Safer Choice and Design for the Environment-certified cleaners and disinfectants can be used safely without PPE.

To learn more about other features to look for in disinfecting wipes and to calculate how many your school might need, please watch the recent webinar I presented here.