This reminded me of
A Cecil Column , of course. 
My logic is thus: My clothes are clean. My body is clean, because I showered this morning. I’ll wash my hands before going to the toilet because I don’t want dirty fingers transferring cooties to my happy bits. So long as I don’t piss on my fingers, or have a wiping poke-through incident, my hands are still clean.
Dunno about you-I’m really fond of my Florsheim wingtips, but I wouldn’t go quite that far. Besides, can a lay person give their own shoes absolution? :dubious:
Forgive me Father for that in which I have stepped. It has been three weeks since my last shoeshine.
Hmmm… You didn’t read Cecil’s column above there, did you. :dubious:
Don’t forget about the Kleenex box shoes. 
Sheesh. I boil myself in bleach four times a day and never leave my sanitary bubble. You people are filthy.
This thread reminds me of my friend P. and her mom. They are so terrified of their skin touching public toilet seats if there’s no paper cover available that they just squat over it.
I say, just put some regular tissue on the seat and wash your thighs when you get home if you’re so nervous about it. Otherwise, in the absence of open sores on the backs of the thighs, it’s not as if you’re going to pick up the flesh-eating bacteria…is it??
The only folks I knew closely enough to be aware of their practices used both tissues and water. But since I obviosuly wasn’t present during the operation, I wouldn’t know how they proceeded.
I understand that people not using tissues use their left hand to “get everything off”. There has been a number of thread on this topic in GQ. I’d assume that once they have washed both their ass and hands with water, they’re probably cleaner than me.
You may be interested to hear about a directive that has circulated through the Regional Health Authority where my wife works as a cancer doc. She has to deal with some immunosuppressed patients, so hand washing and avoiding hospital transmitted infections is a way bigger deal than just common washing your hands after using the bathroom. The directive quoted research that says the same thing that was mentioned above and in Cecil’s colum: washing your hands, even a long time with bacteriocidal soap, doesn’t work well at all in removing/killing germs. What does work in killing those critters are the alcohol gels. The ones you rub into your hands until dry. So the hospital is in the process of switching to these instead of wet water washing. I’ve swithed over to using them after going to the bathroom when I’m at work. Not so much because I’m concerned about bathroom germs, but because going to the bathroom is a good social cue to “wash your hands”, and doing so once or twice daily is an excellent way of avoiding colds and other upper respiratory tract infections like influenza. *Bottom * 
line: it’s not the “underwear zone” cooties you have to worry about; it’s the “noze” cooties that are transmitted by hand contact you should be concerned with.
Here’s a scary factoid: the SARS virus can survive for 72 hours on a metal or plastic surface at room temperature; that means that an infected person can touch a doorknob, elevator button, etc. and 3 *days * later, a healthy person can touch the same surface, pick their nose or bite their cuticle, and catch it… :eek:
No.
-Smeghead, microbiologist