Let's take a moment and think about all of the things you've touched today. Phone, money, toilet, now add 297 other surfaces to that! According to allportablesinks.com you come in contact with 300 surfaces every 30 minuets which exposes you to 840,000 germs! That totally gave me the hee bee gee bee's! But it gets worse! That article also states that after all of those germs only 5% of people was their hands correctly. 33% of people DON'T use soap!! I am dead! So people don't wash right and then they don't dry! Now.. I've never though much about drying but, wet hands are 1000x more likely to spread bacteria!
Have you washed your hands today?? In light of flu/sick season I decided to do some research on hand washing! Not only did I learn some interesting statistics I found the coolest/grossest experiment!
Before we get to the awesome experiment I'm going to hit ya with some other statistics that I found on this same article! EEw!
- Up to 80% of communicable diseases are transferred by touch.
- Proper handwashing can reduce diarrhea rates by 40% and respiratory infections by close to 20%.
- Failing to wash hands correctly contributes to nearly 50% of all foodborne illness outbreaks.
- Only 20% of people wash their hands before preparing food, and 39% before eating food.
- About 7% of women and 15% of men do not wash their hands at all after using the bathroom.
- Most bacteria on our hands is on the fingertips and under the nails. The number of bacteria on our fingertips doubles after using the bathroom. Most people wash the palms of their hands and miss everything else.
- Damp hands are 1,000x more likely to spread bacteria than dry hands. Only about 20% of people dry their hands after washing them.
- There is fecal matter on 10% of credit cards, 14% of banknotes and 16% of cellphones.
- Approximately 39% of people don’t wash their hands after sneezing, coughing or after blowing their nose.
- Elevator buttons harbor 22% more bacteria than toilet seats.
- Reminder signs are successful in encouraging more handwashing.
- Dirty sinks result in less handwashing.
- Handwashing rates are higher in the mornings than evenings.
I am SO doing this with my kids to see if it works! It's pretty self explanatory, you could even switch it up and something else that you come in contact with everyday! My kids use chromebooks for school so I think I'm going to stick with that, if you do this PLEASE PLEASE take and send me pictures!!
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