

Working to understand—and protect—the hand microbiome
For many of us, the pandemic has inspired a new obsession with keeping our hands clean. Yet much is still unknown about the microbes that live on our hands and how to protect their health—and ours. Skin microbiome researcher Kelly N. Haas of the UMass Amherst biology department recently began a research partnership with GOJO Industries—the makers of Purell—to study the relationship between the microbiome, hand hygiene, and hand health.
It’s both futile and potentially dangerous to try to kill all microbes in the environment.
While each of these options has its own pros and cons, they all have the potential to “give a competitive advantage to the organisms we want to be growing on hands and help them repopulate themselves faster after a hand hygiene event,” says Haas.
Share your most intriguing nooks, niches, coordinates, or curiosities on campus or anywhere in the region. Email magazine@umass.edu and we’ll investigate!