Often, while visiting the men’s room, I notice that a substantial portion of this educational facility’s male patrons don’t wash their hands or even run them under water after doing their business–they just let fly, zip up, and walk out.
I always want to stop them and say “Hey, buddy, we’re in a library/cafeteria. Other people are handling the books/plates/money/condiments you’re about to put your hands on. Can you do them a favor and clean up? It will only take you about 30 seconds.” But I don’t, because I ponder this:
Is there a medical reason not to wash your hands? Are there skin diseases which preclude soap usage? Do these same skin diseases (or whatever) also dictate that their carriers can’t use hand sanitizer? Is there any chance whatsoever that some of these people are actually medically or scientifically justified in not washing their hands?
I had really bad eczema on my hands as a child, which made frequent washing not advisable, and I still had it drummed into me to wash my hands after using the bathroom.
OTOH, there’s the old joke: Didn’t your mother teach you to wash your hands after going to the bathroom? No, she taught me not to pee on my fingers. So perhaps they can somehow take care of business without touching anything but their clothing, and feel that washing would be superfluous. Just a thought.
You could argue that you are not likely to come nto contact with many germs if all you touch is your zipper and yourself. If you touch sinks, faucets, soap dispensers etc. which will have been touched by others there is a much higher possibility of coming into contact with fecal matter and consequent germiness.
My mom had some kind of bad skin condition on her hands for a while – might have been eczema – which worsened considerably if she washed her hands using soap. Also made doing the dishes difficult (she now wears rubber gloves for using soap and other cleaning agents).
However, I think in most cases people just don’t want to take the time. I doubt very much a “substantial portion” of people have skin conditions. I DO think a substantial portion of people are frequently thoughtless and lazy.
Disclaimer: I do wash my hands after visits to the loo - I’m really rather good about it. I’m all in favor of everyone doing so.
Having said that, I’d find it interesting to hear what diseases actually are spread by careless/no handwashing. I’m no so much talking theory as practice - how much of a problem is this is the real world? Where does it rank among the nation’s health issues?
I once ordered breakfast in a small truck stop. While waiting for it to be prepared I
went to the men’s room. A young man in an apron followed me in, used the urinal and
walked out as I was washing my hands. I returned to my table when I observed the
same fellow cooking on the grill. I told the cashier about it and she, rather nonchalantly,
said sh’e’d talk to him about it. I returned to the table, thought about it for a minute or
two, saw that the cashier hadn’t moved from her perch and then I got up and walked
out. It was a place that I used to frequented on occasion, but that was my last visit.
When I was dorm chief in Air Force boot camp, I enforced a mandatory hand-washing rule, based on the fact that we were all in medical hold and everyone was already sick anyway. One trainee, after begrudgingly washing his hands for probably the first time, told me this version:
A Marine and an Airman are in a field latrine in (Iraq/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Korea). After they’re done with their business, the Marine washes and dries his hands, but the Airman walks straight out. The Marine catches up with him afterwards and says, “in the Marine Corps, they teach us to wash our hands after using the latrine”. The Airman responds, “in the Air Force, they teach us not to piss on our hands”.
My hands get dry, cracked and bloody if I wash my hands with soap all day in fall (even in San Diego). I use soap at school (because there’s not much alternative) and a moisturizing cleanser at home, and my hands end up OK. YMMV, I guess. Of course, you can carry hand sanitizer around if you have some issue with soap, which brings up the question: other than those allergic to alcohol, is there a population for whom hand sanitizer causes problems?
I read this a year or two ago–my question isn’t whether one should wash their hands, it’s whether there’s a legitimate reason for a small population not to.
Weird allergies, possibly, and most hand sanitizers have fragrance added. This is not a common problem, however.
I always use my special-order fragrance-free sanitizer after using the restroom – but I do it after I’ve touched the nasty door handle. If you lurk about ladies rooms, you might not realize that I’ve done so, but I suspect most people are just lazy slobs.
IANAD, but you COULD theoretically get nasty stuff like typhoid or cholera from a carrier who didn’t wash his/her hands after using the potty. You could also get less dramatic digestive upsets. Frequent hand-washing also helps prevent ordinary colds and flu.
Besides, do YOU want to touch a doorknob that’s just been touched by someone whose unwashed hands have just been in their genital area?
However, what I want to know is, how to paper towels spread disease? Every frickin’ public rest room that has those annoying hot air “dryers” claim that they are preventing the spread of disease. Blowing it around the room in a nice moist particulate form, is more like it.
I work in kitchens from time to time and I always follow this pattern of behaviour; simple reason being that I could wash my hands in the washroom, only to contaminate them again by touching the door handle on the way out - I return to the kitchen, then immediately wash and sanitise my hands in the dedicated handwashing basin in the kitchen.
Of course there may not be any such handwashing facilities in the truck stop you’re talking about (although it’s a legal requirement here).
fetus, I also tend to ask myself such questions in situations where others might act more self-righteously.
I think in certain circumstances, it might work out better to not wash.
you pee hands free or close enough.
paper towels have run out, no handblower, no nothing.
faucet is one of those you have to touch to turn off, and it doesn’t look clean.
you have to pull on a door handle to get out and the door-closing spring is pretty tough so you can’t get out elbowing or something. (why do public bathrooms still insist on using such doors?!)
In those conditions, if you washed, you might get your hands even dirtier.
On a remotely related note,
When eating out at chinese restaurants where each person eats off a small plate, and the waitstaff comes around to change each person’s plate to a fresh one several times in a night, my dad always asks to keep on using his first plate. If there are shells and bones etc to clear, he’d sweep them onto the fresh plate and let the waiter remove it. This puzzled many servers I bet, but the reason is that my dad thinks he wants to avoid eating dishwashing soap that isn’t thoroughly rinsed off those plates.
To all those who argue that hand washing is not needed if you do not urinate on your hands:
Urine is typically a sterile fluid. The penis is far from sterile. Using urine as a rinse following penile contact should actually improve the microbiology of the hands through simple dilution. So, if someone in the men’s room critiques you for not washing, a valid reply would be, “Actually, I pissed all over my hands”.
Except that shaking and stowing the penis, then refastening the trouser with urine-dampened hands probably increases the potential for transfer of pathogens to the fingers.
So a valid reply would have to be: “Actually, I pissed all over my hands and I intend to walk back into the restaurant with my dripping cock still hanging out”
I think of shaking hands with someone - there’s a reason we don’t just grab each other’s penises or butts, but if you’ve not washed your hands after using the bathroom, that’s exactly what you’re asking of me when we shake. I don’t think I want to know you quite that well. To me it follows the same chain of reasoning as “kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Back to the OP - when I was a new dad and changing a lot of diapers, particularly in the winter, my hands would get really dried and chapped/bleeding from all the washing. I would then, sometimes, be less concientious about hand-washing after the bathroom - but of course always washing after a diaper.
However, I suspect I’ve done so thousands of times in my life, and that this happens to others many millions of times a day. I’m unaware of any harm that has come to me, and I suspect this rarely leads to significant health problems.
