Clean Boss Independent Testing

10/19/2020

Clean Boss is a new hand sanitizer by Joy Mangano. She started selling Clean Boss in October 2020. I tested Clean Boss on my children's hands and compared it to Suave Hand Sanitizer. I was given the bottle of Clean Boss from the company in August 2020 to test. I purchased the Suave Hand Sanitizer at Walmart in August 2020. 

Clean Boss Ingredients

76% ethanol, benzethonium chloride, dimethicone, farnesol, hydroxyethylcellulose, panthenol, PEG-12,  Polyaminopropyl Biguanide, water

Suave Hand Sanitizer Ingredients

75% ethanol, water, carbomer, triethanolamine

Procedure

First, I had my kids rub their dirty hands on agar plates. The kids had been playing outside but did not have visible dirt on their hands. 

Then I put 1mL Clean Boss Hand Sanitizer on one hand.  

I rubbed the sanitizer in with my clean gloved hand. 

We waited 1 minute to let the hand sanitizer work and then rubbed that hand on an agar plate. 

We repeated this procedure with 1mL of the Suave hand sanitizer on the other hand. I incubated the agar plates for 48 hours in my warm incubator (about 90 degrees F) to give the bacteria time to grow.

About Agar Plates

In case you are new to looking at agar plates, let me explain. The whitish/yellowish dots on the plates are colonies (or piles) of millions of bacteria. Not all types of bacteria can grow on these agar plates. Viruses can NOT grow on these agar plates. Yeast, mold, and fungus CAN also grow on these plates. In general, the more colonies that grow on the plate, the more germs there were on the surface that was swabbed (or the hand that was rubbed onto the plate). However, a clean agar plate does not necessarily mean that no germs whatsoever were present on the surface because not everything can grow on an agar plate.

Results

             Left Hand.        Right Hand.  

As you can see, the Clean Boss plates have hardly any germs compared to the Suave plates!

I can't test for viruses, unfortunately. The FDA has a rule that hand sanitizer companies are not allowed to tell people which viruses their hand sanitizers kill. Many hand sanitizer companies do test to determine if their hand sanitizers kill norovirus and other illness causing viruses. But they aren't allowed to tell you the results. The FDA does not think people have the right to know. Apparently, they don't want you to be able to make informed decisions about which hand sanitizer is best for you. My longtime favorite hand sanitizer, Zylast, got in trouble with the FDA for showing people (including me) their norovirus test data. But my work shows that all hand sanitizers are NOT created equal. So, it is important to know which ones actually work the best! 

Due to the similarity of Clean Boss and Zylast, I am very sure that Clean Boss would do just as well as Zylast killing norovirus. Since Zylast has a history of terrible customer service, I'll be switching to Clean Boss. (I love you, Zylast, I really do. But your customer service has been terrible for years. I get constant complaints that Zylast direct won't email people back. )

Clean Boss can only be purchased on their website here. It is not on Amazon. I do not earn any money recommending Clean Boss or Zylast. I wish I did. I spend a lot of money doing experiments. However, I'm happy if you all just start using hand sanitizer that actually works! And please use enough sanitizer. Your hand has to be covered in it to get the clean results that I get in these experiments. A pea size drop does not cut it.