Some may describe me as a germaphobe because I wash my hands more now more than I did 10-12 years ago. Back then I thought more or less everyone, who was not a bum or with “challenged faculties”, washed their hands. But then I married into a family where I’ve seen things that I would not believe myself, had I not seen them first hand. As a result, I now wash my hands more when visiting in-laws because I know they don’t after using the restroom, after cleaning up pet feces/bird feces, etc. Knowing that everything they touch (door knobs, remote controls, furniture, etc.) has a higher than normal amount of feces particles on them, makes me bone up on handwashing because I have to touch the same things they touch.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no2/larson.htm

I have not pulled up any links for it to paste here but I also recall studies that indicate overly sterile environments appear to have a role in causing appendicitis – this is a condition largely non-existent in third-world countries.

LOL

Guess how it spreads?

healthysigns4u.com

http://steelwhitetable.org/media/images/didnt-wash-hands.jpg

The Christians believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness so to blame them for not washing up is a pretty big stretch.

As for the machismo comment…way to be racist. And misinformed. Metrosexuals borrow quite a lot from the machismo style and grooming.

That being said, I wash my hands anyway. Why not? I need to wash everything off that I’ve gotten from doorknobs, money, etc. Seems like a good time to do it, and a way to do it regularly.

As for those of you who think your alcohol gel is keeping you from getting colds and flus — that would be magical. Alcohol doesn’t kill viruses. Soap doesn’t kill viruses as much as it simply ensures you rinse pathogens *off* of your skin. Rubbing them in with alcohol gel just seems like a bad idea. But it’ll certainly keep bacteria off your hands.

To those who blatantly refuse to wash their extremities during post-deprecation activities: Wash your hands for the love of [insert whatever the hell you like here]. Who cares if it doesn’t gross you out? Just wash them, is that so freaking much to ask? Think of others around you for a change. Or is that the whole point, you simply don’t give a damned and have no interest in serving anyone other than yerself?

GROW THE F UP.

First of all: What is wrong with anecdotal evidence? Since it happened to someone in real life doesn’t it count as data?

This is a good question, and the answer is rather involved.

First, consider what evidence actually is in a scientific context. Evidence is not a single data point, it is a set of observations that confirms or refutes an hypothesis. Context is very important.

Second, scientific data is always about measuring the right things in the right ways. So many aspects of human experience are influenced by our own subjectivity that scientists forever strive to acquire data objectively. There are many unconcious ways in which we may bias our own reporting of experiences.

An anecdotal account of something may trigger an investigation, but the anecdote cannot be part of the data obtained through that investigation. The acquisition of scientific data must, wherever possible, be controlled to limit or exclude the influence of external factors.

Yes, it does, and if enough people chime in (as in your comments sections) then it certainly becomes more than just data.

No. Because people do many things without realising it to bias the data:

People notice the unusual but not the usual;
People assume causal correlations where there are none;
Coincidences often look like relationships;
People remember details very poorly (and in so many things, the devil is in the detail);
People do not grasp statistics very well.

I agree with the commenter who stated that anecdotal accounts should not be used to support handwashing, any more than they should be used to support not washing the hands. There are too many possible other influences at work that could account for the outcome, while being far less obvious than a handwashing regime.

I tend to wash before and after.

When you’ve just used the bathroom, you’re pretty sure where your hands have been, what they’ve been touching etc.

But when you walk in, before you touch anything of your own, what were your hands touching? Shake hands with the client? Nab somethign at the vending machine?

Who knows what you’re about to smear on your most intimate bits.

Heh.

I used to work in a university virology department. I always washed before and after!

I think one source of miscommunication is that many people think washing hands after using the bathroom has something to do with poop and pee. The truth is, your own poop and pee is no threat to you, and not really a threat to others unless you have some kind of active infection. It may be gross and smelly, but it’s not generally dangerous.

This would have been correct once, but is not really any more.

Your gut flora are not hazardous to others if those other people have the same strains of gut flora. However, because we now live in such large and mobile communities, this is the exception not the rule. Your gut flora can probably cause some kind of illness to most of the people you will encounter during the course of a typical day.

Does everybody on here have the fear of germs or something? People have freedom in this country. If they don’t want to wash their hands that’s their business I’m not going to cry over it.

You may be right, technically, but how difficult is it to wash your hands after defaecating?

It’s not against the law for the general public to not wash their hands.

True. But are you saying that common sense needs to be legislated before it applies to you?

This swine flu is blown way out of proportion and even this rant of an article on hand washing. I’m not going to worry about every single microbe that I’m in contact with because I’m sure that would number in the millions. I don’t live in fear.

Actually, right now you are in contact with tens of trillions of bacteria.

They outnumber the cells in your body by approximately ten to one.

However, the latest flu variety is actually a virus. Washing your hands after defaecating is good advice in a fairly general sense. If you have flu, washing your hands after sneezing (assuming you used a handkerchief or tissue) is a good way to reduce the likelihood of spreading it.

Either way, it is simple civility to minimise the risk of you passing an infection of any kind on to other people. If that infection is potentially fatal (as is influenza), is it not reasonable that you should minimse the risk of passing it on?

Let me explain the denialist rationale – which, BTW, does have some experimental support. The skin has a layer of beneficial natural bacteria.

Nope.

Beneficial is not the same as harmless. We have probably several dozen to several hundred species of bacteria on our skin. Most of the time, these cause no harm. Mainly, this is because our skin is an effective barrier to bacterial ingress.

However, if we become wounded and the wound is not cleaned (e.g. by the flow of blood exiting the body, but grazes that merely ooze a little bit of blood would not clean the wound adequately), these bacteria that you describe as beneficial will infect the wound.

Ever heard of MRSA? The SA stands for Staphylococcus aureus, which is a common skin-dwelling bacterium. If given the opportunity, it can cause potentially fatal infections.

Potential pathogens typically fail to produce infections because they cannot generate a large enough population to out-compete the natural bacteria.

This is often the case in the gut, but not on the skin. Bacteria on the skin fail to produce infections because they cannot enter the body.

The use of anti-bacterial soaps and sanitizers indiscriminately kill much of the natural bacterial population.

This may be true, but ordinary soap is not anti-bacterial. It does not kill bacteria, it loosens their “grip” on your skin so that you can remove most of them. I.e., washing your hands with ordinary soap decreases the population of these “beneficial” bacteria.

The danger of antibacterial handwash is that many of these handwashes contain antibiotics, and you thus create a selection pressure for the evolution of antibiotic resistance in your skin flora. Use either soap or alcohol jelly.

This greatly reduces the natural defenses of the skin if there is exposure to a pathogen.

Except that it does not.

The conclusion is that it’s only best to wash if the expected level of recent contamination is significantly higher than what will be experienced after washing (when the skin will be more vulnerable).

This is a purely selfish perspective. When you wipe after defaecating, you will probably get some of your gut flora on your hand(s). This is, of course, harmless to you, but may be quite hazardous to other people.

Despite what is commonly believed, restrooms are relatively low-risk environments compared to doorknobs and computer keyboards.

Only because toilets are cleaned so frequently, and because they are made with smooth, hard surfaces where dirt cannot lodge and thus harbour colonies of bacteria. However, the interior door handle of the toilet probably has a great many different species of bacteria on it, albeit at small populations due to the nature of the material (i.e. if it is a smooth metal handle, it will generally not allow the bacteria to multiply).

Like so many things, dose is all-important. Most people’s immune systems can quite easily handle a few hundred thousand foreign bacterial cells suddenly being in their food (e.g. if that person shook hands with you and then ate a sandwich), but a few tens of millions not so much (e.g. if you did not wash your hands after defaecating before that person shook your hand).

Actually homeopathic doctors make a soap by diluting a tiny bit of dirt (like cures like) with swimming pool of water.

Or, to make more “powerful” soap, they take a teeny drop from that swimming pool, react all of Jupiter’s hydrogen with oxygen to make more water, and dilute it in that!

A “30C” dilution is 1 in 10⁶⁰, and that’s one of the “weaker” concoctions!!!

Perhaps you could secretly rig up a big flashing “Didn’t wash hands” sign & accompanying siren and next time they come out trigger it to ring .. at the most crowded and public time possible natch!

“PS. Phil Plait, you have no idea how much I wish you’d add an edit button to these comments. ”

StevoR: Tell me ain’t you!?! LOL

No, I’m not germophobic, as I’ve already stated above. There is a middle ground between germophobic and disgusting slob. Apparently this a concept some people don’t understand. I certainly can’t make you understand that.

So, when are you going to lick a public toilet? Or are you too germophobic to do such a thing?