Hand hygiene for hotels and resorts

01 · The shift

Clean rooms, clean hands

Room attendants strip beds, scrub bathrooms and wipe down every high-touch surface, room after room, in and out of gloves. Line cooks and dishwashers wash their hands more times in a shift than they could count. The front desk handles keys, pens, cash and cards from every guest.

A hotel runs on clean rooms and healthy staff. Both depend on hands that hold up to the work.

In the FDA Food Code, a hand antiseptic goes only on hands that have already been washed. In the kitchen, sanitizer is a second step, not a stand-in for the sink.FDA Food Code, 2-301 (Hands and Arms)

02 · Wet work

Water, chemicals and gloves

• Skin cells
• Oils and lipids
• Water
• Cleaning chemicals

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is made of dead skin cells held together by natural oils and lipids. Picture bricks and mortar. The mortar holds moisture in and keeps irritants out.

Hotel work wears that mortar away from three directions: constant washing in the kitchen, cleaning chemicals in housekeeping, and gloves that trap sweat against the skin for hours. Alcohol sanitizer at every station adds a fourth.

Source: R&R Lotion blog, Protecting Your Skin with Barrier Creams (2023).

03 · What develops

Irritant contact dermatitis

• Water escaping
• Irritants

Keep exposing skin to water, cleaners and the inside of a glove and the barrier breaks down. That’s irritant contact dermatitis. It starts as redness, itching and dryness and can progress to cracking and blistering.

NIOSH counts skin disease among the most common work-related illnesses, and wet work, with hands wet or gloved for long stretches, is one of its main causes. Cracked hands are also harder to keep clean, which matters on a kitchen line.

There’s a second type, allergic contact dermatitis, where skin becomes sensitized to something it touches, including some glove materials and cleaning products. If your hands won’t heal, get them looked at.

04 · Why we built it

Built to work next to the kitchen

Hand care in a hotel has to be fine around food-prep areas, gentle enough to use all shift, and easy to store in bulk. So we built a short line where every hand product has its NSF category on file, and the sanitizers carry no alcohol.

I.C. Lotion and the Hand Sanitizing Cream are dermatologist tested: a 50-subject patch test with zero reactions.ALS / BioScreen, FDA-registered lab, Study 22-522A (2022)

For counters, desks and other hard surfaces, I.C. Workstation Cleaner is a mild, streak-free, odorless cleaner. It’s a cleaner, not a registered disinfectant.

05 · On shift

When to use what

1. 1
   Clock inWash with I.C. Antibacterial Hand Cleaner (E2). In the kitchen, follow with sanitizer (E3) on the washed hands if your food safety plan calls for it.
2. 2
   Each room or taskGloves off, then I.C. Foaming Hand Sanitizer from the cart, rubbed in until dry, then fresh gloves. In the kitchen: wash first, every time.
3. 3
   Break timeI.C. Lotion (E4) where your plan allows it. Let it dry, then wash and glove before you go back to the line.
4. 4
   End of shiftAfter your last wash, lotion once more before you head home.

Follow your property’s food safety plan and the label directions on each sanitizer and cleaning chemical.