Purell Claims It Kills Norovirus: University of Minnesota Raises Their Hand and Says "Not Quite.."

Every hand sanitizer manufacturer is obliged to elbow under the back board and come up with new claims that purportedly make their product sound more effective

In December, Johnson & Johnson's Purell introduced a special Purell for cruise lines, and claims that their enhanced formula (which has 70% alcohol vs. their consumer and bar tender friendly 62% alcohol) kills norovirus. For those hand hygiene and product experts that responsibly say ...really??? we thought the only thing that kills norovirus on the hands is bleach..or iodine.."

here's a study from University of Minnesota--hot off the press..click on the link or read the excerpt...what do we think?...we're sticking with alcohol-free.


Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN 55108, USA.

Hand disinfection is considered important in preventing the transmission of viruses, including norovirus. We investigated the virucidal efficacy of nine hand sanitisers (four alcohol-based sanitisers, three non-alcoholic sanitisers and two triclosan-containing antimicrobial liquid soaps) against feline calicivirus, a surrogate for norovirus, on artificially contaminated fingertips for 30s and 2min contact periods. Among alcohol-based sanitisers, a product containing 99.5% ethanol was more effective than those containing 62% ethanol, 70% isopropanol or 91% isopropanol. A log(10) virus reduction factor of 1.00-1.30 was achieved with 99.5% ethanol but those containing a lower alcohol concentration only achieved a log(10) reduction factor of
PMID: 18207605 [PubMed - in process]