Staff reporter Anya Rath details the proper way to wash your hands, according to the experts.
Be wary of what you touch — a recent MSU study published in the Journal of Environmental Health shows only 5 percent of people who use the bathroom wash their hands long enough to rid them of dirt and germs.
Carl Borchgrevink, associate professor in MSU’s School of Hospitality Business and the lead investigator of the study, said he noticed there were not many studies on sanitation and hand-washing conducted in college towns.
Borchgrevink then recruited 12 MSU undergraduate students and trained them to collect data for the study. For more than a year, the researchers observed 3,749 bathroom users in various locations to gauge if soap was used, the length of time hands were scrubbed and the impact of any environmental influences, such as encouraging signs, time of day or cleanliness of the sinks.
Borchgrevink said the researchers stood inconspicuously in the corner of bathrooms and would pretend to be on their phones texting, when in reality they would be recording data.
“If they knew they were being watched, they were more likely to engage in socially expected behaviors,” Borchgrevink said.
Borchgrevink said 23 percent of the samples participated in “attempted washing,” meaning they merely wet their hands without soap or did not wash their hands for the correct duration. He said that people washed their hands for an average of 6.75 seconds — much less than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended 15 to 20 seconds.
Borchgrevink said washing hands with soap for the full 20 seconds isn’t about killing germs. Rather, it’s to capture the dirt and germs within the soap and then wash it down the drain.
He added that a good way to time the length of hand-washing is to hum the full “Happy Birthday” song twice.
“It’s really critical that we maintain and encourage hand-washing,” Borchgrevink said.
Borchgrevink also said many foodborne illnesses are related to improperly washed hands.
Ariana Warfield, general manager and director of operations at the East Lansing branch of Bubble Island, 515 E. Grand River Ave., said Bubble Island has strict policies on hand-washing. She said they have designated areas to wash their hands in the kitchen and at the front counter.
“Any time we go between the front area and the kitchen, we have to wash our hands,” Warfield said.
Mechanical engineering senior Megan Blaszak said the study didn’t seem realistic to her, and thought 5 percent of people properly washing their hands was too low of a number.
“I always wash my hands after I’ve been doing any type of cleaning or taking the trash out or before I make food,” Blaszak said. “I would just think other people do, too.”
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