This hand sanitzer uses plasma, for cleaning

The New York Times highlights the development of a new type of hand sanitizer, primarily developed for hospitals, that uses plasma to zap your hands clean. It’s cheap, too, costing around $100 to build, so maybe they’ll find their way into the crippled U.S. health-care system one day?

The device was developed in Germany at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. It uses plasma—heated gas, essentially—to clean your hands all over, including underneath your nails. It’s quick: your hands will be clean as a whistle (?) in only four seconds.

Why stop at hospitals? If these things end up being that inexpensive at $100, we should install them in elementary school bathrooms and teach those walking disease bags—young children—how to properly wash their hands. Install it at restaurants, too, so you can be certain that your chef at TGI Fridays has exquisitely clean hands. The food may be rubbish, but at least it’s been handled properly.