How to Disinfect Your Vehicle
How to Properly Disinfect the Interior of Your Vehicle
If you have been watching the news or scrolling through social media, you should have seen the do’s and don’ts for washing your hands and keeping everything sanitized and safe! However, we hardly see any information about how to properly clean our cars. This is tricky because unlike your countertops and door knobs, some cleaning solutions can be damaging to the interior of your vehicle. Let’s take a look and what is safe and what we should stay away from when disinfecting our cars!
To start off, here is a link from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of approved disinfectants – which is a good reference just to have –
https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/list-n-disinfectants-use-against-sars-cov-2
Why is cleaning your car so important?
If you go out for a grocery run, following guidelines, you should take those groceries home, disinfect the item, any area that was touched by the item, and wash your hands. Those groceries are sitting in your car, your hands – even while wearing gloves – would have touched the groceries and are now transferring contaminants to everything you touch. This includes your car door handles, your seat and seat belt, your steering wheel, your display screen along with any volume or other buttons, probably your arm rest, wipers and turn signals, mirrors, window buttons, and just about every single part of your vehicle. So while you are worrying about bringing coronaviruses into your house, you should also be thinking about how many germs are in your car. The good news is, with taking the appropriate measures to sanitize and clean, you will be able to prevent the spread!
What Works
When looking at what is effective and good to use, you should be safe with just about any alcohol solution that contains at least 70% alcohol. You best bet though will definitely be Isopropyl Alcohol. Isopropyl Alcohol has been tested on plastic trim to imitation leather to painted chrome, and has been proven to not degrade the material.*
What if you don’t have this lying around and you are taking every precaution to stay home unless completely necessary? Vigorous washing with soap and water can destroy a coronavirus. Just do not scrub it too hard as you risk the chance of removing dyes in your leather or damaging your fabric upholstery. For spot cleaning, you can use a simple Ivory soap and water. If you have a leather interior, any leather cleaner will work just fine. There is also the option of using a small amount of water with laundry detergent.
When disinfecting your vehicle, it is recommended to use a microfiber cloth. This will be the safest and gentlest option.
What Not to Use
When we talk about which products you shouldn’t use, it is only because they can be damaging to your car. These products can be great for tabletops and kitchen sinks. For starters, do not use bleach or hydrogen peroxide. These can very easily damage the interior. When cleaning your screens, stay away from ammonia-based cleaners as these can damage the anti-glare or anti-fingerprint coatings. Lastly, as said before, when scrubbing something down, be careful not to scrub the surface too hard.
In addition to keeping your car clean, make sure to continue to wash your hands before and after driving. If you clean down your steering wheel and then touch it with dirty hands, what good is cleaning it?
Check out this blog we wrote for you on how to make your own cleaners! – DIY CLEANERS
Stay healthy and stay safe! Hope these tips and tricks helped!
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