Don’t Give Virus A Helping Hand

I don’t know if this bothers you, but it sure bothers me. You drop by a public restroom, do your thing and stop on the way out to wash your hands.

But as you stand there - waiting for the water to warm and pumping the soap dispenser ‘til you’re blue in the face - something occurs to you, something rather gross.

Of all the people coming and going, maybe half stop on the way out to wash their hands. Or is it just my imagination acting up?

I conducted a little undercover survey in public restrooms in order to find out.

The results were astounding. At the Cinedome theaters on Sacramento’s Ethan Way, half of the 10 women observed washed up on the way out. At Arden Fair Mall, the numbers were worse, with only four of nine women washing. (The 10th woman deserves her own sentence: She turned on the water, brushed her hair and turned the water off without ever washing.)

The ladies’ room at Nordstrom was just as bad. Only four in 10 women there washed. Seventy percent preened in the mirror.

I did not survey the men’s room.

Lest you think I’ve gone completely bonkers this time - “Hey, now she’s doing interviews in the bathroom!” - personal hygiene is indeed at the top of the news.

I say this because viruses whose control depends on personal hygiene are on the rise again. One of these is hepatitis A, about which Sacramento Bee staff writer Tom Philp recently reported.

According to Philp’s report, the debilitating and sometimes fatal virus is moving through Northern California like it hasn’t in a long time. Shasta County is reporting record numbers (544 cases this year, compared with eight in 1993), while Sacramento County has had 260 cases this year, more than double the 122 of last year.

The first symptoms of the virus mimic a bad cold. Then the infected person becomes jaundiced, with a yellowing of the skin and eyes. Other symptoms include fatigue, abdominal pain and dark urine, although some people have the virus without knowing they do.

Such was the case 10 years ago, Sacramento family practitioner Dr. Jeffrey Tanji said, when about 100 cases were traced to a bakery then in business on Sacramento’s K Street. (It’s not now.) The bakery supplied many local cafeterias and eateries with muffins, croissants and other baked treats. The employee it was traced to had no idea he had the virus.

Battling the spread of such viruses is problematic when you consider some of the societal trends we’re up against.

Many schools, for instance, no longer stock student restrooms with soap. Maintenance workers don’t like to because the kids use it to deliberately make a mess.

Many elementary school teachers provide soap at their classroom sinks instead. But, except for the rare teacher who makes the students wash before lunch, mere presence doesn’t mean the soap gets much use.

After all, how seriously do students take health units on personal hygiene if their own restrooms lack the tools of basic cleanliness?

Several principals I spoke with agreed.

“You’re absolutely right,” a principal in the Sacramento City Unified School District said, adding that, in the grand scheme of campus issues, this problem is an easy one to solve.

“We’ve just got to do it, that’s all,” she said. “We’ll bring the soap back. The decision’s made.”

Hepatitis A is mainly transmitted by fecal-oral contamination, according to Elizabeth Murane, director of public-health nursing in Shasta County, the Northern California county most embattled by the virus.

“This is gross, but in a nutshell what you’re doing is consuming some of someone else’s poop,” Murane said. “It may be microscopic, but that’s what we’re talking about.”

In Shasta County, 1 percent of those infected got it from water, 2 percent from food, 7 percent each from IV-needle users or family, and 24 percent from someone the infected person knew. Fifty-six percent of the transmittals were from unknown sources.

The virus also can be transmitted by sharing food or cigarettes during a brief window during which the virus is present in the infected person’s saliva, Murane said.

Lack of good hygiene in the schools is a big concern of hers, too. For instance, an infected child could use the restroom, not wash his hands, then offer a pal one of his lunch-pail cookies, in exchange, say, for half a Ding Dong, as children are apt to do.

“It could definitely be transmitted that way,” Murane said.

It’s not absence of hot water, which many older schools lack, but ignorance about the value of “good, old-fashioned hand washing,” she said.

“Basically, what you need is 20 seconds of good friction, good soap and running water to wash the germs away because to some extent they stick to the natural oils on your skin.”

It’s that easy.

Here’s to a healthy, happy new year!

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service