Using hot water to wash hands is therefore unnecessary, as well as wasteful, Carrico said, particularly when it comes to the environment. According to her research, people use warm or hot water 64 percent of the time when they wash their hands. Using that number, Carrico's team calculated a significant impact on the planet.
"Although the choice of water temperature during a single hand wash may appear trivial, when multiplied by the nearly 800 billion hand washes performed by Americans each year, this practice results in more than 6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually," she said.
That's roughly equal to the emissions of two coal-fired power plants, or 1,250,000 passenger vehicles, over the course of a year. It's higher than the greenhouse gas emissions of small countries like El Salvador or Armenia, and is about equivalent to the emissions of Barbados. If all US citizens washed their hands in cooler water, it would be like eliminating the energy-related carbon emissions of 299,700 US homes, or the total annual emissions from the US zinc or lead industries.
The researchers found that close to 70 percent of respondents said they believe that using hot water is more effective than warm, room temperature, or cold water, despite a lack of evidence backing that up, said Carrico. Her study noted research that showed a "strong cognitive connection" between water temperature and hygiene in both the United States and Western Europe, compared to other countries, like Japan, where hot water is associated more with comfort than with health.
【研究:用热水洗手只是浪费能源 并不能杀菌】相关文章:
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