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Holiday Travel: Are you taking germs with you?

With holiday travel time quickly approaching, people won't be the only travelers this holiday season. Germs will also be traveling through the air.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Epidemiologist, Dr. Gavin MacGregor-Skinner says the safest way to keep your guests from getting sick this holiday season is, "Inside our home, if we have guests even if we have friends and family over for the holidays for a great time, then what do you do after they leave? You clean and disinfect the surfaces that they touch."

MacGregor-Skinner says the most important thing when purchasing and using cleaning products is reading the label, and if you're looking for a disinfectant, "All disinfectants must have an EPA registration number; and you can take that. You can copy that registration number and you can put it on the EPA website. You can put it in a google search and come up and explain how to use that product."

The Environmental Protection Agency has a website for disinfectants and each disinfectant must have an EPA registration number. 

"Now, if it's just a cleaning product, it will not have an EPA registration number. and what's really important with disinfectants is that when you read the label, it'll have wet contact time."

It will tell you how long each of the surfaces needs to remain wet.

"In order to kill all the germs that we want to do to to ensure that we're clean for health."

Dr. MacGregor-Skinner says one of the main things to remember this holiday season is, "Every time you touch a surface, if you use soap and water, if you haven't got soap and water, you use a hand sanitizer."

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This interview was provided by International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), The Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association. For more information visit rethinkclean.org.

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