Have you noticed about have the people leaving a public bathroom do not wash their hands or do so very perfucntorily.
As for me, I don’t feel like shaking hands any more.
Personally, it kinds disgusts me. I seem to remember Cecil takling this issue. It involved someone thiking that since urine contains ammonia, shouldn’t your hands be cleaner after you are done doing your business? Let me go check…Ah, found it.
I hear from some people that they don’t wash their hands because of this reason (they don’t get urine on them/they say urine is sterile.) Well that AIN’T the problem, bucko! Wash 'em anyways!
berdollos you make some good points in your recent posts, but you’re not developing a germ phobia a la Howard Hughes, are you?
QtM
Didn’t Hughes have OCD?
s/He has a point about washing after using the bathroom. What’s the point anyway? To get out of the bathroom after washing your hands you have to touch the faucet handle & doorknob which are already probably full of e coli bateria. Of course, I like to use my foot on the door cause I notice people aren’t washing.
Then I hope you wash your feet after using the restroom! 
the trick is to not pee on your hands in the first place. If you’re a guy and your willy is so filthy that you need to wash your hands after holding it (for aim), you’ve got other more important problems. 
Um. No.
You see, that whole area is CRAWLING WITH BACTERIA. It has nothing to do with ‘filth’ or with peeing on your hands.
Hey OpalCat,
What part of your body do you think is NOT crawling with bacteria?
I like to think of my “non-handwashing-unless-I-pee-on-them” approach as my little contribution to conserving the environment. Did you know that if we all stopped washing our hands afer every pee, we’d save over 4.362 x 10E8 gallons of water per DAY! Come on folks, let’s all pitch in!
Pee, except for the first few drops, is fairly sterile unless you got yourself a bladder infection. But then I don’t think you could give yourself a bladder infection twice if you got pee on your hands & didnt wash.
I guess I still subscribe to the wash-my-hands-for-60-full-seconds-after-every-bathroom-encouter way of thinking. I heard a 14-year-old girl in a public restroom at a football game say, “Washing your hands is so overrated.” It kinda grossed me out; I didn’t want to touch the door after she had.
Coliform bacteria? Hmm… most of your body except the area around your groin.
ReillyDog here’s Cecil’s column on the need to wash your hands even if you don’t pee on them. As a physician, I agree with him 100%. As a sycophantic toady, I agree 110%.
Qadgop, I’ve seen the sinks docs get to use with their no-touch faucets. Now, I would like one of those :-)…I think you can get one like them for the home they have an infrared sensor in them to turn the water on when you hands are under them.
A distinction so few of us bother to observe in our everyday lives.
Cecil also wrote about toilet plumes. You flush & whatever was in the toilet is microscopically put on everything in the bathroom. gross.
One day I’m PMSing and I see my friend come out of the bathroom stall and rinse her hands off… I made her go back and wash them with soap because I had to open the door. I don’t know what compelled me to do that, but I felt better afterwards.