You can plug in to handkerchiefs?


Foreign disgust everyone knows. The own cut-off toe nails: a little bit of Horn, that’s all. The Toenail of a Stranger in the hotel bath tub: a reason to abandon the long-awaited bathroom. The same principle applies to used tissues. During the own Rotzfahnen in emergency situations facilitated from the bag and once more blows his nose, causing just the idea of Nausea, to do the same with the towels.

The difference between Self – and other-loathing is easily explained. The own pathogens can harm us in the rule, nothing more, since our immune system already knows you and has developed methods to fight it. We need to expose their own agents even, otherwise the nose would be clean, no Po will be wiped. In the case of foreign precipitates, however, everyone prefers to distance should hold.

“Also, in the case of tissues, it is unlikely that you get infected on your own again”, says Marcus Panning from the Institute for Virology at the University hospital of Freiburg. “Others, however, can become infected, if you clean for example the cloths for their children.” The paper must be soaked, but fresh, and the stranger mucus find a way into his own face. Because the common cold pathogens rhinovirus, are far less contagious than many people think.

Cold experiments in the eighties: now, please, kiss

Most of the knowledge about how cold viruses spread, thanks to a physician today to Try from the Seventies and eighties. At the time, dozens of students as test objects were available and participated in day-long nose run. “Today, such a thing would allow no ethics Commission,” says Panning.

In 1984, about the infected scientist from the University of Wisconsin, 26 students with Rhino virus. Then Try with other volunteers followed. In the first Experiment, the researchers placed five patients and nine Healthy for two to three hours in a small room, let them discuss with each other, sing and play cards. No one picked it up.

Then the researchers increased the intensity. The next Time spent a Cold and Healthy for three consecutive nights in a small Dorm room. All participants were asked to come at seven in the evening, and to go at the earliest, at seven in the morning. Doors and Windows should be closed. But this Time, only one of eleven participants became infected.


Rhino virus – the common cold pathogen

Behind colds a variety of viruses, Rhino viruses cause more than half of the diseases in the world. They occur especially before the beginning and after the end of the Flu season – so towards the end of the year and the beginning of spring.


So the researchers increased the risk of infection. In the third Experiment, each of a healthy and a erkälteter Student kissed each other one to one and a half minutes long – with a short kiss, it was not done so. However, even at this close range, only one of 13 persons, diseased, the researchers reported in the “Journal of Infectious Diseases”.

Their conclusion: rhinoviruses are significantly less contagious than other germs. The most efficient way of Transmission, the researchers had not tested, however, as further Experiments showed.

Holding hands is more dangerous than kissing

In the case of similar experiments that had taken place in 1978, made it a scientist, to infect significantly more students. The difference: The researchers are not locked caught a Cold and Healthy only in a small space, but also put on hands contact.

The task of the Healthy it was, a Diseased brush directly to the bridge of the Nose to shake for ten seconds. Then, you had to be with the contaminated Hand two to three times on the nose or eye, it took so creep resistance. Then the hands washed.

The method proved to be very effective: 9 out of 15 test subjects developed a cold. Three people were infected even though under the hands of any agent of shaking were on their hands detectable. This shows that even the smallest virus can be sufficient quantities for infection, is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Virginia concluded in the “Journal of Infection”.

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The Tests allowed for a conclusion: holding hands in the cold time more risky than kissing, at least in terms of frequent rhinoviruses. What is surprising at first glance, with several points to explain. As showed in the experiments, among other things, that in the saliva for only a few pathogens to swim, most of the bales up secretions in the nose.

Add to that the pathogens from the mouth can be rinsed through the esophagus toward the stomach acid, which eliminates the virus. The nasal mucosa is, however, a direct gateway offers the pathogens in the upper respiratory tract. Itself on the eye of the way is just a bit longer, because excess tears flowing into the nasal cavity and their potential pathogens. This also explains why the wines, the nose is running.

How long do viruses stay on handkerchiefs, and co. dangerous?

The question is, how long cold viruses outside of the body, such as on tissues, remains, at all dangerous for you to stay. The answer strongly depends on the environment. “As a rule of thumb, one can say that the common cold virus is a steel or plastic surfaces survive longer,” says Panning. “Porous surfaces, such as handkerchiefs and clothing, deprive them of fluid, causing them to dry out and break.”

In the case of the periods, however, it is only minutes, hours or a few days. “Even if the virus is protected in a slime chunk on a smooth surface to land and survive there, definitely not weeks,” says Panning. On the skin of the Rhino virus survived for to Try for up to two hours.

And even if the pathogens have made it into the body, decides a final factor about how dangerous they are: the own immune system. Small children are particularly vulnerable if your immune system is familiar with a pathogen. “RS-virus, for example, are the cause of the cold, discomfort, noise, once through the complete kindergarten,” says Panning. “Many of the children had previously never been in contact with them. The first infection, but then at the age of one or two years.”

Even in adults, the body can unlearn the defense a bit, as also from the seventies show – this Time not with students, but with Antarctic researchers, who have lived in isolation for five months. In comparison to city dwellers, the Isolated diseased faster, longer and stronger, after they had used a nasal spray with the pathogens.

A little contact with the common cold virus is, therefore, quite useful to train the immune system. This is not to say, however, that you should overcome the foreign disgust and with strangers Rotzfahnen blowing your nose – because the nose and eye, the pathogens should not get better.


Conclusion: the common cold pathogen can on handkerchiefs, only a few hours to survive. In this time, it is impossible to even self-infect. For others, however, a fresh damp Rotzfahnen are quite a danger. The most risky but remains Chilled, the Hand to give, and then to the eye or nose. Self-Kissing is the most common virus harmless as holding hands.