Dirty Hands Study - Wednesday 15 October
2008
The further north you go, the more likely
you are to have faecal bacteria on your
hands, especially if you are a man,
according to a preliminary study conducted
by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine.
But women living in the South and Wales have
little to feel smug about. In London, they
are three times as likely as their men folk
to have dirty hands, and in Cardiff, twice
as likely. The men of London registered the
most impressive score among all those
surveyed, with a mere 6% found to have
faecal bugs on their hands. Overall more
than one on four commuters have bacteria
which come from faeces on their hands.
The Dirty Hands Study was conducted in order
to provide a snapshot of the nation's hand
hygiene habits, as part of the world's first
Global Hand washing Day today. Commuters'
hands were swabbed at bus stops outside five
train stations around the UK (Newcastle,
Liverpool, Birmingham, Euston and Cardiff).
The results indicated that commuters in
Newcastle were up to three times more likely
than those in London to have faecal bacteria
on their hands (44% compared to 13%) while
those in Birmingham and Cardiff were roughly
equal in the hand hygiene stakes (23% and
24% respectively). Commuters in Liverpool
also registered a high score for faecal
bacteria, with a contamination rate of 34%.
In Newcastle and Liverpool, men were more
likely than women to show contamination (53%
of men compared to 30% of women in
Newcastle, and 36% of men compared to 31% of
women in Liverpool), although in the other
three centres, the women's hands were
dirtier. Almost twice as many women than men
in Cardiff were found to have contamination
(29% compared to 15 %) while in Euston, they
were more than three times likelier than the
men to have faecal bacteria on their hands
(the men here registered an impressive 6%,
compared to a rate of 21% in the women). In
Birmingham, the rate for women was slightly
higher than the men (26% compared to 21%).
The bacteria that were found are all from
the gut, and do not necessarily always cause
disease, although they do indicate that
hands have not been washed properly.
Dr Val Curtis, Director of the Hygiene
Centre at the London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine, comments: 'We were
flabbergasted by the finding that so many
people had faecal bugs on their hands. The
figures were far higher than we had
anticipated, and suggest that there is a
real problem with people washing their hands
in the UK. If any of these people had been
suffering from a diarrhoeal disease, the
potential for it to be passed around would
be greatly increased by their failure to
wash their hands after going to the toilet'.
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