What about hand sanitizers? Should we not be using those as well or is limited usage (say keeping a bottle in the car for use before you scarf down a McDouble) ok?
Hand sanitizers are generally alcohol-based. The scientific consensus is that bacteria can't evolve resistance to alcohol any more than they can evolve resistance to (say) chlorine bleach. We just can't use it internally in effective concentrations, because at such concentrations it's also poisinous to the patient.
Hand sanitizers that are just alcohol should be fine if they're high enough concentration but there's sort of a skin damage / actually-killing-bacteria trade off there.
I've been spraying my hands off with 70% ethanol in labs for the past ~10 years. So, FWIW, a lot of people with phds in microbiology do that (to protect themselves and their experiments from themselves).
I use hand sanitizers, but only when there is no alternative, that is when there is no water/soap, or when the washroom is unusable (read: no paper towels).
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers work differently. Instead of having some lasting effect on your skin to not only kill bacteria and keep it off, alcohol-based sanitizers simply kill the stuff on your hands at the time. In general, I haven't come across anything that says it is bad or has the lasting effects of the anti-bacterial soaps.
