Tips to Gardening

Keeping Clean with Paper Towel Hygiene!

We all need to use public restroom facilities from time to time. Next time you need to use a rest stop when you are traveling or the toilets in a restaurant or shopping center, it would be a good idea to think about paper towel hygiene and hand dryer hygiene. Have you ever wondered how many people have used the toilet before you? Probably a lot more than you really want to think about.

And yet these areas can be harboring many germs – invisible to the naked eye, which may cause you yourself unpleasant diseases, and which you may then pass on to those you come into contact with throughout the day. Germs may be lurking in many areas of public toilets – on toilet handles, door handles, sink taps – in fact every surface that someone touches once they have used the toilet.

Fortunately, you can limit the dangers posed by restroom bacteria by washing your hands properly after using the toilet and then drying them thoroughly. It’s a shocking fact that some research studies show that only fifteen percent of males and twenty percent of females wash their hands after using public toilets. It is also important that when you do wash your hands that you use soap because simply washing them with water will not kill bacteria.

The second step you can take is to thoroughly dry your hands afterwards – this step is sometimes overlooked, but moisture left on hands can still carry bacteria. This is where paper towel hygiene versus hand dryer hygiene should be considered. Hand dryers rely on drying your hands by a blast of usually warm air – however, some research has shown that this can be less hygienic than using a paper towel.

Hand dryers dry your hands by blasting hot or warm air on them causing water to evaporate. There is some indication, however, that this approach is less hygienic than simply using a paper towel. This is because many people do not keep their hands under the hot air for long enough and also because the hot air actually blows any bacteria still on the hands into other parts of the room.

These bacteria are easily spread to areas well outside the toilet area. For example, when you are at work a number of people are likely to use the toilet throughout the day. You may not use it at all on a particular day but you don’t know if those who did use it actually washed their hands. It’s likely that you have touched something that they touched or even shook someone’s hand. Let’s face it, it isn’t hard to have germs passed to you from people, directly or indirectly.

In other words, because some people don’t carefully wash their hands and use paper towel hygiene, bacteria from the toilet area can spread throughout the office. You are in contact with these germs during the work day and are likely to pick them up and take them home to your family. It’s a never ending cycle, causing people to become unwell or even seriously ill.

Then again, if you’re a frequent restroom user, it’s important to take the appropriate steps to limit your contraction of germs. Just by doing the little things like not touching the door or handle to flush the toilet will reduce the amount of germs that you come into contact with. When you wash your hands, make sure you use good paper towel hygiene and dry them completely. If you don’t, it could cost you time and money at the doctor.