Some days ago a news item about a hand cleanliness survey in the UK rested briefly in my brain. I’ve just got round to refreshing! it. So on googling around I eventually keyed in ‘faecal matter Newcastle’ which led me to a useful blog by Matt Brown:
http://network.nature.com/hubs/london/blog/2008/10/22/best-faecal-matter-news-story-ever#comment-form
and to a reasonably clear report of the findings of the preliminary study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in a publication called ScienceDaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081014204440.htm
The study which took a sample of 409 people consisting of approximately 46 men and 46 women in each of 5 cities came up with the following overall percents (adding men and women counts) of hand faecal contamination:
Newcastle 44
Liverpool 34
Cardiff 24
Birmingham 23
London 13
I deduce that it must be very hard to keep the stuff off one’s hands at all times so we must wash them more often and more thoroughly, especially after having our bowels open. We should also try to avoid touching things like toilet door handles, soap dispenser levers and other human beings. The first suggestion could lead us to having to kick the toilet door in which leads to privacy problems and to possible arrest for vandalism. The second point means perhaps just using running water but then the tap has to be turned on. Avoiding physical contact with other humans is disappointing news for the frottage community and in the long term would lead to the dying out of the human race.
One comment on Matt Brown’s blog says that it is advisable to be at least 5 metres away from the toilet when cleaning your teeth. I suppose we must brace ourselves for a worrying report about the incidence of faecal matter on teeth.
Mercifully the faecal matter researchers did not include faecal quantity details. I can only assume that they were finding microscopic amounts as opposed to full-blown stools.
Anyway, time for lunch preceded and followed by a thorough head to toe scrubbing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment