Put Out To Dry
Do you leave public restrooms with wet, freshly cleaned hands?
You may want to do something about that, and here’s why. Even though freshly washed hands are clean, when your skin is damp, rapid bacterial re-growth occurs. Not necessarily a bad thing since your flora, the “healthy” bacteria that normally populate skin, will take advantage of the extra moisture and rapidly repopulate your skin with more “healthy” bacteria.
However, since you’re in a public restroom, when you opened the door with wet hands to leave you probably seeded the freshly irrigated skin with whatever potentially harmful bacteria were left there by people who may not have washed at all. Transient bacteria on damp skin not only grow faster but they can be harder to remove the next time you wash.
The good news is that this period of rapid bacterial growth comes to an end as soon as the skin is dry. The difficulty is that you may find yourself in a public restroom that’s out of paper towel or has a poorly operating air blower. When faced with this dilemma you have to make the best of the situation.
- After you wash, try to ignore those behind you. Take as much time at the blower as you need to dry your hands.
- Try not to touch the door handle or anything else when your hands are damp.
- If you had to leave with wet hands, you can always use a hand sanitizer after exiting.
And we can look forward to a time when public bathrooms are more efficient and environmental. See Treehugger’s post on Dyson’s Airblade that uses 83% less energy.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under General, Out and About. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
