What would sanitiser fail to do that detergent and warm water would do in cleaning glasses frame that isn't 'visibly soiled'?

Question

Update (from comment):

It's certainly possible that the manufacturer had that in mind when making their cleaning recommendation, but I'd like to think they would specifically warn against it if it was a common issue.

For an arbitrary glasses frame, specifically the earsocks, can regular alcohol/sanitiser replace detergent and warm water? Apparently some brands of glasses frames recommend really detergent and warm water. I mean, with alcohol and sanitiser, am I perhaps killing only 99% of the germs instead of 99.9% of the germs? (If we wanted planes to be safe "with statistical significance" that is 99% confidence level we'd have between 400 and 2500 crashes a day.)
I couldn't find any videos for this on youtube. Most of what youtube gives is cleaning ears or cleaning the lenses.
Edited to add: I got the following with my new glasses.

Kind of a hassle to do the recommendation especially that I've never cleaned glasses frames in my 13 years of wearing of glasses, except when they were, to borrow a term from WHO, 'visibly soiled':

Clean your hands by rubbing them
with an alcohol-based formulation,
as the preferred mean for routine
hygienic hand antisepsis if hands
are not visibly soiled. It is faster,
more effective, and better tolerated
by your hands than washing with
soap and water.

• Wash your hands with soap and water
when hands are visibly dirty or visibly
soiled with blood or other body fluids
or after using the toilet.

Alcohol is a substitute for soap and water for hands that are not 'visibly soiled'. Is there perhaps some kind of substitute for glasses frame?

MikeyC · Accepted Answer

Ignoring any possible impact alcohol-based solvents might have on the material or coating of frames, alcohol won't really remove anything it dissolves unless it is rinsed or at least thoroughly wiped off. When the alcohol evaporates, it will leave behind a residue containing anything that was dissolved in it. That's why your hands sometimes feel sticky after applying that gel hand sanitizer. The gelling agents don't evaporate with the alcohol, but instead remain on your skin.
But since this is the Biology stack, so I'll try to provide a more biological answer.

What would sanitizer fail to do that detergent and warm water would do in cleaning glasses frame that isn't 'visibly soiled'?

While alcohol based sanitizers are effective at killing most pathogens, it's typically on par with a soap and water scrub. However, for the purposes of sanitation (which seems to be the only reason you'd need to clean frames that are "not visibly soiled") there are several indications for which alcohol based sanitizers are considered ineffective and inferior to soap and water. This is generally because of the specific physiology or life cycle stage of certain organisms which allow them to be resistant to the biocidal effects of alcohol. Common examples include Cryptosporidium, a water-borne protozoan parasite, norovirus, a non-enveloped intestinal virus that spreads notoriously fast in hospital environments and on cruise ships, and almost all endospore-forming bacteria, like Clostridium perfringens and Clostridioides difficile. In the lab, we actually use alcohol to isolate live bacterial spores from the vegetative components of a culture. It has also been reported that alcohol based sanitizers are more likely to cause allergic reactions (e.g. contact dermatitis) from skin exposure.
Most of these statements can be referenced in this open-access article on PubMed, with links to primary sources if you're interested in following up more.
Gold NA, Mirza TM, Avva U. Alcohol Sanitizer. 2020 Jun 24. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513254/#

acvill · Answer

The earsocks on Oakley brand sunglasses are made of a proprietary hydrophilic rubber called Unobtanium 1.  From what I can find, Unobtanium is likely a styrene copolymer 2, possibly a formulation called Kraton G 3.  Polystyrene is insoluble in water, but soluble in ethanol and 2-propanol (isopropanol) 4, which are the most common alcohols used in sanitizers.
So, as suggested by @Cell, soapy water is likely recommended by the manufacturer because it is unlikely to damage the glasses, whereas alcohol-based cleaners may degrade the soft rubber components.

https://www.oakleyforum.com/threads/how-to-restore-old-unobtainium-that-has-gone-sticky.10821/
https://www.oakleyforum.com/threads/rubbers.21973/page-2
https://kraton.com/products/KRATON_G.php
https://www.bangslabs.com/common-solvents-and-non-solvents-polystyrene

What would sanitiser fail to do that detergent and warm water would do in cleaning glasses frame that isn't 'visibly soiled'?

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