Put your hand in a pan of water. Is the water cold, neutral or hot? If it feels cold, it is probably well below your body temperature. Likewise, if it feels lukewarm, it is near your body temperature and if hot, then somewhat greater than your body temperature.

But how cold or hot is it? You can’t tell just with your hand. But if you had a thermometer in your hand, it would be easy to establish how hot or cold the water is.

This same principle holds true with sanitizer test strips. They are designed to detect the presence of a sanitizer within a specific range. The color changes are usually indistinct and the ranges for the matching color swatches are usually rather broad.

By contrast, a titration kit will give you an exact reading of the concentration of the sanitizer present in a solution. It will do it accurately and reproducibly and the concentration you obtain can be recorded with confidence.

Test strips, when used appropriately, can tell you whether a sanitizer is or is not present, but they are not accurate, and should never be relied on for generating data where accuracy and dependability are required.