Only 77% wash hands after using the toilet

Advocates are pushing for more frequent scrubbings in health care and non-health care settings.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Oct. 8, 2007.

How clean are your hands? How about the person who just shook yours?

Several presentations at last month's Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago suggested that people not only wash their hands less often than they say they do, but the number who really do appears to be decreasing. Also, improving hand hygiene in the health care setting saves money.

"Hands are great distributors of disease, but hand washing is a great intervention," said Judy Daly, PhD, spokeswoman for the American Society for Microbiology, which organizes this meeting. She is also director of the microbiology laboratory at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

According to data from observational and telephone surveys by Harris Interactive, which were commissioned by the society as well as the Soap and Detergent Assn. and released at the meeting, 92% of adults say they always wash their hands after using a public restroom. When observed in places such as train stations and sports stadiums, only 77% actually do. This represented a decline from the 83% observed in the 2005 version of this survey.

Significant gender differences also were seen, with only 66% of men soaping up compared with 88% of women. Similar gaps between men and women also were found by other studies that examined the behavior of doctors and health care professionals.

"Very clearly, guys need to step up to the sink," said Brian Sansoni, vice president of communication for the soap association.