Here’s a newsflash - guess what you can culture on your skin? Staphylococcus and E. coli. Guess what you can culture on your phone? How about your counter top?
Soap does not kill most bacteria, unless it is anti-bacterial soap which we aren't supposed to use because of the creation of resistant strains of bacteria, because soap will not kill them - wait what just happened?
Lysol and alcohol may have negative effects on band materials - use with caution unless you are really rich and in that case go ahead and destroy your posessions on a regular basis because you really just don't care, because you have that luxury and are a very inconsiderate and wasteful person which is the worst insult I know.
Apple cider vinegar is a total scam and is no different than regular acetic acid and this reminds me of the people who think that mixing vinegar and baking soda makes some sort of miracle cleaner that is safe and effective which of course it is not effective at all since you just deactivated the vinegar. The by product of the magic "cleaning" reaction is co2 and sodium acetate, which is a chemical compound used to make salt and vinegar potato chips very vinegary without being a wet soggy acidic mess.
I don't wear a watch but my wife likes her Apple Watch and when she cleans her bands we use OxiClean or the active ingredient, sodium percarbonate, which is also the active ingredient in Efferdent and is also the active ingredient in most coffee machine cleaning tablets and the active ingredient in most "color safe" laundry bleach products and so far we have seen no damage to the bands.
Tonight I like really long sentences.
No. Very misleading bordering on outright wrong. Soap DOES kill bacteria and viruses by destroying their bilipid layer - their outer membrane. Soap literally tears apart the pathogen. No anti-bacterial addition needed.
Excerpt: Some bacteria and viruses have lipid membranes that resemble double-layered micelles with two bands of hydrophobic tails sandwiched between two rings of hydrophilic heads. These membranes are studded with important proteins that allow viruses to infect cells and perform vital tasks that keep bacteria alive. Pathogens wrapped in lipid membranes include coronaviruses, H.I.V., the viruses that cause hepatitis B and C, herpes, Ebola, Zika, dengue, and numerous bacteria that attack the intestines and respiratory tract.
When you wash your hands with soap and water, you surround any microorganisms on your skin with soap molecules. The hydrophobic tails of the free-floating soap molecules attempt to evade water; in the process, they wedge themselves into the lipid envelopes of certain microbes and viruses, prying them apart.
“They act like crowbars and destabilize the whole system,” said Prof. Pall Thordarson, acting head of chemistry at the University of New South Wales. Essential proteins spill from the ruptured membranes into the surrounding water, killing the bacteria and rendering the viruses useless.
So wash your bands with soap - especially if you have metal bands. Then, if you have bands made of porous materials, use some alcohol.
Has anybody really gotten sick from a watchband? We all Staphylococcus which most people healthy people tolerate. We all have bacterial flora on our bodies. What about the cell phone? That harbors just as much bacteria. Has anyone ever caught an infection from using an iphone? Bacteria is on everything we touch. Anyone with a healthy immune system will not have a problem. People with a compromised immune system will probably get sick if exposed. But! It’s sure as hell it’s not from your cellphone or wristband.
So what has happened to all those people over, say, the last 80 or 90 years who haven’t been washing their watch bands? Did they suffer from awful infections? I think we need to know.
I change my watch band monthly and throw last month's in the wash.
This has worked great except for one Apple band, which was not colorfast and basically was ruined by the colors bleeding into each other. No damage to my clothes, but the band was dead. The cheap amazon bands have not had this problem - only one actual Apple purchase.
I’d like to state here and now that the statement in this article’s eye catching announcement that “no one cleans them” when it comes to Apple Watch straps & bands most certainly DOES NOT apply to me and my friends! We change to a freshly sanitised band or strap when we put our Apple Watches back on after a night recharging. On a hot & sticky day I can use 3 different bands that have all been sanitised since they last worn. Our favorite product for sanitising our Apple Watch bands & straps is a fluid usually used to sterilise babies bottles - we rinse them under a hard flowing hot tap and then shake off excess water and place them in the sanitising fluid overnight (we DON’T rinse them before hanging them up somewhere to dry naturally). In this country the brand of sanitising fluid we prefer is “Milton”, something just as good may be available in your locale.
Bah. This is the least of my worries in my household. Refrigerator doors, spice bottles, door handles. There are a zillion things that are dirtier than watch bands. Just rinse them and your done. Other things in the house? Much much much worse.
Steve Jobs never had to clean his car, because he bought a new one each month (so that he could avoid the license plate requirement, which had a 30-day grace period after purchasing a new car.)
Steve Jobs never had to clean his car, because he bought a new one each month (so that he could avoid the license plate requirement, which had a 30-day grace period after purchasing a new car.)
False. He bought a new one every 6 months for a period of time. But he was never concerned with licensing, or handicapped parking laws either, for that matter. He just paid the fines, which were meaningless to him.
So what has happened to all those people over, say, the last 80 or 90 years who haven’t been washing their watch bands? Did they suffer from awful infections? I think we need to know.
Some may have gotten sick. Many, probably did not, like most of us who are living with less clean habits compared to germaphobes and everyone in between.
The problem is the clickbait study uses the typical FUD method of sensationalism and attaches Apple’s name to it for clicks. It could be informative, but falls on the other side of just being useful.
So clean you watchband if you are concerned. And wash your hands. Etc.
I wash my Apple watch and iPhone at least once every day. When the washing hands reminder feature was in, I already asked why not telling people to wash their Apple watch too. My post was banned.
I clean my Apple Watch, Bands, and Beats Pro every time I am done at the gym. My gym provides disinfecting wipes there to clean the equipment, so I used that on my apple stuff.
And our iPhone screens are filthy, too. And our AirPods. And headphones. And microphones. And keyboards. And mouses.
Tell us something we don’t know.
Just replace Apple with a blank space and publish this article every couple years to remind us.
If you look hard enough for germs you will find that the planet Earth is not fit for human occupation. Yet here we are using all our means to make it less fit for human habitation. If we aren't cleaning our Apple watches to help foster super bugs we are replacing them every year even thou they last well a long time.
My Apple watch series 2 is almost 7 years old still going strong, still lasting a full active day even in winter (the only time I ever get to reserve power might need to turn on), and only gets the odd clean with a dry soft cloth. Leather band that is almost as old only the watch bit gets cleaned.
I'm sure if you did a test it would freak people out but these are my germs we have a symbiotic relationship.
Comments
Read this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/health/soap-coronavirus-handwashing-germs.html
Excerpt:
Some bacteria and viruses have lipid membranes that resemble double-layered micelles with two bands of hydrophobic tails sandwiched between two rings of hydrophilic heads. These membranes are studded with important proteins that allow viruses to infect cells and perform vital tasks that keep bacteria alive. Pathogens wrapped in lipid membranes include coronaviruses, H.I.V., the viruses that cause hepatitis B and C, herpes, Ebola, Zika, dengue, and numerous bacteria that attack the intestines and respiratory tract.
So wash your bands with soap - especially if you have metal bands. Then, if you have bands made of porous materials, use some alcohol.
This has worked great except for one Apple band, which was not colorfast and basically was ruined by the colors bleeding into each other. No damage to my clothes, but the band was dead. The cheap amazon bands have not had this problem - only one actual Apple purchase.
FTFY.
Just one.
My Apple watch series 2 is almost 7 years old still going strong, still lasting a full active day even in winter (the only time I ever get to reserve power might need to turn on), and only gets the odd clean with a dry soft cloth. Leather band that is almost as old only the watch bit gets cleaned.
I'm sure if you did a test it would freak people out but these are my germs we have a symbiotic relationship.