Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, 2 December 2014: Students Aleksandar Hizman, Sabine Vollmer, Chantal Baumann, Kim Krieger and Lars Frohn from the ‘Quality, Environment, Safety and Hygiene’ degree programme at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, have won first prize at the European Detergents Conference – worth 300 euros – with their poster. The poster, produced under the supervision of Prof. Dirk Bockmühl, Professor of Hygiene and Microbiology at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, was presented at the SEPAWA Congress and impressed the jury. SEPAWA (the Association of Soap, Perfume, Cosmetics and Detergent Specialists) aims, through its programme, to specifically promote the next generation of scientists in the relevant specialist fields and to reward the best work. The projects were required to be application-oriented and to take into account SEPAWA’s specialist areas, such as detergents and cleaning agents, cosmetics, perfumery and chemical engineering applications.
The poster, produced as part of a project by Aleksandar Hizman, Sabine Vollmer, Chantal Baumann, Kim Krieger and Lars Frohn, focuses on standard household washing and cleaning methods for everyday garments and is entitled ‘Do you really know your flatmates? A survey on the hygiene habits of German students’. The study explored a perceived gap between students’ existing knowledge and their resulting behaviour with regard to hygiene. Based on a survey featuring questions such as ‘How do you assess the risk of infection from bacteria spread by your clothes?’ or ‘How do you wash your socks and underwear?’, the students’ hygiene and washing habits were examined. The results of this study were analysed and presented visually in the form of a poster, incorporating text and diagrams. “I was, of course, delighted to receive this award, because we invested a great deal of time in the project and it was a wonderful feeling for us to receive positive feedback and an award from outsiders,” says Aleksandar Hizman, a student at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and lead author of the project.
In addition, Sarah Henze, a student on the ‘Bio Science and Health’ programme, was awarded third place in the SEPAWA Sponsorship Prize for her Bachelor’s thesis on ‘In vitro investigation of the transmission routes of the skin infection Impetigo contagiosa between skin and textiles’. The Bachelor’s thesis was completed under the supervision of Prof. Dr Dirk Bockmühl in collaboration with the Hohenstein Institutes.
The SEPAWA Congress has an international focus and takes place annually. Thanks to a joint initiative between the Detergent Chemistry Division of the German Chemical Society and the SEPAWA Association, experts from a wide variety of fields come together. Over 2,000 participants from 40 countries attended the 61st SEPAWA Congress.
