Hand disinfectants don't prevent the flu

I bought some bottles of disinfectant last year and spread them around the house so people could ignore them. Turns out, it didn't matter.

The regular use of alcohol-based disinfecting hand gels authorities recommended during the A(H1N1) pandemic has little effect on the disease's infection rate, according to a new study.

The findings suggest that the pandemic virus and similar strains may be most effectively transmitted in the air, rather than by contact with infected surfaces, the authors of the study said.

"An alcohol hand disinfectant with enhanced antiviral activity failed to significantly reduce the frequency of infection with either rhinovirus or influenza," wrote the authors of the study presented Sunday at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC).

This year I'll buy gas masks.