93. That's DISGUSTING!

I’m returning to a subject I’ve briefly touched on before.  I do so unashamedly because I feel so strongly about it.

In “I'm Merely Observing!" in December 2010, I wrote about my experience while using the Gents lavatory at The Royal Free Hospital where I witnessed a man leave a cubicle and walk straight out without washing his hands.  The only way that I could also leave was by gripping the same door handle upon which the filthy bugger had possibly just deposited some of his euphemism. 

For space and also for health and safety reasons, pulling the handle inwards is the only way to open that outer door.  That is the case with almost all public lavatories.  Ideally and hygienically, I should have been able to lean on the door with my shoulder and exit without touching the handle.

Any person walking in the corridor being whacked by an opening door is at minor risk compared with the dangers that arise from the transmission of E. coli, a bacterium that can cause serious food poisoning and that can survive for long periods outside the gut on a door handle.

“It is ridiculous,” I told my consultant shortly afterwards, “that at the Royal Free Hospital of all places, the lavatory doors don’t open outwards.” 

He didn’t disagree.

There is an Italian restaurant on The Green in Southgate.  I visited it once and left without waiting for the food I had just ordered.  Shortly after placing my order I went to the lavatory.  As I went in, a young man in kitchen garb came out of the cubicle, walked to the door, opened it and just walked out, presumably straight into the kitchen.  I left immediately and I will never go back.

A few weeks after that, in the Atticus column of the Sunday Times, Roland White ridiculed the Conservative MP, Nadine Dorries who had informed the world that she always wraps a tissue around a public lavatory door handle as she leaves.  I wrote to him saying that there are many aspects of Ms Dorries’ opinions, attitudes and behaviour that are worthy of derision, but her admission of a fear of contagion is not one of them.

I told him in my e-mail that what I always do is to tear off several strips of toilet paper to wrap around the door handle and then drop the paper on to the floor just inside the door as I walk out.  It is litter but I am unrepentant. 

Mr White replied and conceded that I had a valid point and perhaps he had been a little harsh on Ms Dorries.

A few days ago, between 7:20 and 7:45 in the morning I was listening to the radio and heard these quite startling statistics:

1. The average age at which a child in the UK gets his or her first mobile phone is 7½.

2. Over her lifetime, the average woman spends £166,000 on beauty products and spends 320 days applying it.  (A woman I know hardly bothers at all)

3. 40% of women and 62% of men fail to wash their hands after using the lavatory.

4. 28% of mobile phones bear traces of faecal matter.

3 and 4 are among the most disgusting things I have ever heard.  I don’t care much about the contaminated telephones because I don’t think that there will ever be a need for me to use or touch somebody else’s phone.  But, if these people are contaminating phones, they are also polluting other things too - door handles especially.  At some time or other all of us have to make contact with door handles!

Whenever I have the opportunity in pubs, restaurants and hospitals and if it is appropriate, I raise the matter.  I’ve never got anywhere.  Those responsible, always talk with no apparent sense of irony, about health and safety issues and space limitations. 

Now that you have thoughts about it, aren’t you outraged too?  If you were to join me in my crusade, perhaps we will eventually see change.