As millions of Americans wait for a vaccine against the H1N1 virus, health officials say the best defense is to wash your hands.

Daniel Kemp takes a closer look at what's really on our hands and what works when it comes to keeping the bad stuff off.

Many of us use them every day -- hand sanitizers and anti-bacterial soap.

So with the help of a couple of teachers and some students at Warren Central High School, we decided to give a few of these products a try.

"I was shocked at how much stuff was on there," said Chris Cohron, a freshman at Warren Central High School.

"It's really nasty what collected on some of the plates," said Zach Steward, also a freshman.

"Some of the stuff on here would make people sick," said Dr. Linda Walker, a biology teacher at Warren Central High School.

To the naked eye they're invisible.

"It's the pathogens that you're most concerned about," Dr. Walker said.

Lurking on doors and up hallway banisters -- germs are everywhere.

"People are very concerned about illness, and they're a lot more germ-phobic than they used to be," Dr. Walker said.

It's a reason these may've become so popular.

Hand sanitizers in schools, businesses and homes have become a hygienic necessity.

"My parents are so strict about that-- it's hand sanitizer automatically," said Emira Ikanovic, a Warren Central freshman.

But how well do they work?

To find out, we enlisted the help of Alex, Emira, Colin and Chris, and Melina, Zach, Chasity and Chandler -- or they're hands anyway.

"Your hands come into contact with more microbes than just about anything else," Dr. Walker said.

So from liquid, to wipes, to old-fashioned soap-and-water, we put anti-bacterial at it's best to the test.

"I think soap and water's going to work because when you use hand sanitizer you don't get everything off," said Chasity Beckner, a Warren Central freshman.

"I think the hand sanitizer will work best, because when you wash your hands you don't always get all the germs off," said Colin Hiatt, also a Warren Central freshman.

The procedure was simple -- have each student place their unwashed fingers onto the surface of an agar plate.

"Whatever can live on the surface of the skin can also live in that plate," Dr. Walker said.

Then with each using a different anti-bacterial product the students cleaned their hands and touched a new plate.

"What we did was essentially gather any wild microbes that were on the surface of their skin," Dr. Walker said.

With every student came some type of bacteria.

"It looks like you've got at least strep, staph and mold," Dr. Walker said.

"It's just really gross," said Zach Steward, a Warren Central freshman.

"Just looking at their hands they don't see this stuff and once they did the demonstration they actually got to see the bacteria on their hands. I think that made them realize how effective hand washing is and using hand sanitizer is," said Scott Carroll, a health teacher at Warren Central.

Remember Chasity?

She used a generic brand of anti-bacterial soap and water.

"The first try before I washed my hands was really disgusting, but after I washed them the blood agar was totally clear," she said.

And Melina?

She used a generic brand of sanitizer.

"When I looked at it, it kind of looked like it did better than the brand-name sanitizer did for the others," she said.

Some name brand hand wipes did the trick for Chandler.

She agrees that they're certainly an important extra precaution to an already trusted method.

"People definitely need to wash their hands more often, because they don't even know what's on their hands and we got to see it and it's horrible," she said.

While some of our best results varied among products, the worst result came when Emirah only used a half pump of a generic brand sanitizer.

Health officials says you've got to use enough that it takes 15-to-20 seconds before it's dry and when you're washing your hands, do so for at least 20 seconds.

Results from our experiment:

- Alex, Germ-X : Significant Result

- Chandler, Wet-Ones Antibacterial Hands & Face Wipes: Significant Result

- Chasity, Equate Foaming Antibacterial Hand Soap: Significant Result

- Chris, Only water: Some Result

- Colin, Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer: Some Result

- Emira, Kroger Waterless Instant Hand Sanitizer: Little Result (*only half a pump of sanitizer was used)

- Melina, School-issued waterless hand sanitizer: Significant Result

- Zach, Equate Baby Wipes with Natural Aloe and Vitamin E: Significant Result