While washing your hands with soap and water should be your go-to, in certain circumstances, hand sanitizers are a good backup plan, according to doctors and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Hand sanitizer is a good way to disinfect when you don’t have access to soap and water between hand washes,” says Dr. Andrew Alexis, chair of Mount Sinai’s department of dermatology. “Alcohol-based sanitizers with 60 percent alcohol or higher are best at killing many types of germs”. If your bottle contains any less than that, it may reduce the growth of germs but not kill them.”

Basically, any hand sanitizer with more than 60 percent is a good hand sanitizer. Some examples are Purell Advanced hand sanitizer with 70 percent ethyl alcohol as the active ingredient. Purell has one of the highest alcohol concentrations.

A second good hand sanitizer is Meyers Basil hand sanitizer spray which contains 62 percent ethyl alcohol and leaves behind a fresh, bright scent.

Last of the top three sanitizers is Faber hand sanitizer. Faber’s new hand sanitizer formula follows World Health Organization guidelines with 80 percent alcohol. It comes in a traditional glass spirits bottle with a “Do not drink” marked clearly on the label, and I think it’s a cool bottle.

These are just examples of many great hand sanitizers one can use but there are a variety of different sanitizers depending on what you’re looking for.  Although it is always recommended to wash your hands then use hand sanitizer.