95% of people are not washing their hands properly after using the restroom: are you one of those people and do you think the "right way" is excessive?

I am not compulsive but do wash my hands every time I use the bathroom, before I start meal preppping, after I clean the litter boxes and just because it’s been awhile sometimes. lol
I also use hand sanitizer and spray Lysol around and do all the door knobs, keyboards, drawr handles etc. fairly often.
I usually wash in warm water with soap but sometimes cold. Good enough, I’m not panicikng. haha

Well I don’t rinse my hands for that long but I do all the other stuff.
If I’m like in a rush or something I just use sanitizer.

If I did that my hands would be dried up prunes. My hands are constantly being washed. I just lather well and then rinse. I even wash while cooking if I touched food.

Wow, I usually wash my hands for 20 seconds, and I thought that was going overboard.

Oh, im very ‘thorough :)

I wash my hands very thoroughly after going to the bathroom, after changing the litterbox (I usually wash thoroughly twice after the litterbox), after doing the dishes, after touching anything that feels sticky, between petting my animals and touching my baby nephew, or after doing anything else that makes my hands feel contaminated.

Otherwise, I just lather and rinse.

I feel like the “right way” can be determined by results. I rarely pick up contagious illnesses so I feel like what I’m doing is fine. It’s less than what’s described, but still plenty thorough with soap and water.

Fear of germs doesn’t pay off in the long run.

100% of all statistics are bullshit.

Who decides what is ‘right” and “wrong”? How were the statistics compiled? Is this statistics collection published and repeatable?

This sounds like a made-up number that someone decided to invent to push a political/social point of view.

What a crock.

I feel like I wash my hands properly though I don’t wash them for 40 seconds; 20–30 seconds maybe. Besides it’s been proven that if you say ” a scientific study proves…...” anybody will believe it.

Yes, I wash my hands the way the article describes. This was always called the “hospital method” in my house. My mother, a nurse, taught it to me when I was very young. I wasn’t always fastidious about it back then, but I got into the habit later when I started working at a hospital and haven’t fallen out of it yet.

Note: There is a typo in the OP. The article says 20 seconds, not 40 seconds.

I do yes, also when I have been out (shopping or other) I come home and give my hands a good wash. I also wash before handling food. I use an antibacterial soap. I don’t know how long I rinse my hands for I suppose until all the soap is off.

@elbanditoroso Would you like to try reading the article and engaging with the scientist rather than just making a faith-based assertion that the report is inaccurate?

After using the washroom, changing the litter and before making something to eat. Normal stuff.

I sometimes wash my hands, but often do not because of time constraints. Knowing that so many people do not wash their hands properly and that somehow we still manage to survive, I’m not that concerned. I guess if there was a big, serious epidemic going around I would take it more seriously.

There was this BBC program where two women would come in and clean filthy, filthy houses. One of the women would do a swab of various areas around the house and then have it analyzed. She would always come back with a report of horrible bacteria being found and would say that the bacteria could make you very, very sick or kill you. After hearing a couple of people push back and say “yeah, but I never did get sick,” I started to think about it. I worked in a microbiology lab, so I understand how it all works, but I do think that we are more concerned with germs than we need to be.

I don’t wash them for that long, but I do always wash them after the bathroom. What I do try to do in public bathrooms is not touch the faucet with my hands after I have washed them, I use my wrist or with a paper towel, and not touch the door handle. Although, two of the dirtiest places in a restaurant are the bottom of the chair at the edge and the menus.

By the way, washing with regular soap or antibacterial soap shows no significant difference for bacterial growth after washing. Regular soap is just as effective as long as you scrub long enough and thoroughly.

I worked in nursing when I was still employed and the handwashing is still thoroughly ingrained in my muscle memory. I hardly ever wash my hands any other way.
Public restrooms scare the hell out of me, I wash thoroughly and I touch everything with a paper towel. Yeuck.

In the army they taught us not to piss on our hands.

@woodcutter Pee is at the bottom of the list for worry.

No dude, I had ritual purity bred into me. I’m a Brahmin. It horrifies me to see how many men do not feel the need to wash their hands after touching their dicks in the restroom. I find that unbelievably crude.

Since urine is sterile in a healthy person (no bladder or UTI infection and no blood in the urine), I generally just rinse after pissing. (In the countryside in India this week, it’s debatable whether my hands are cleaner before or after I rinse with tap water, too.)

The full joke that @woodcutter alluded to is:
“In kindergarten learned to wash my hands after peeing.”
“In the Marine Corps / Army / whatever they taught us not to pee on our hands.”

Otherwise, when I do wash my hands, it’s more or less following the guidelines, except for scrubbing under fingernails. I don’t routinely do that unless I’m going to start cooking, but I keep my nails pretty short, anyway, so there isn’t a lot of area to cause a problem.

I do everything it lists. I take about 20 seconds (thank goodness the 40 seconds was a typo… I was like “what?!” I do it even more vigorously if my hands are particularly dirty (like after doing kitty litter and the like). I always thought I was excessive.

I also use hand sanitizer when out and about. I use it whenever I get back into the vehicle from wherever I’ve been, because I swear I can feel the germs eating through my hands like a flesh-eating plague!

My partner is the same as I am when it comes to hand washing.

I wash my hands every time I use the bathroom but not for that long. I do use the proper full technique before preparing food that other people are going to eat.

I knew a girl who washed her hands before going to the batnroom. Every so often I do that myself.

@JLeslie I have to do that now, because I have to do it with a catheter. I wash more thoroughly on the way in than on the way out.

Of the men who washed, only 50% of men observed for the study used soap??

I wash for about 1 Happy Birthday song. I scrub the front and back of my hands, between my fingers and get the soap under my nails… but mostly when I’m at work (I work in a hospital but not with patients). When home I wash much less thorough, unless I was preparing raw meat, changing kitty litter or got something gross on my hands.

I pretty much do it the ‘right’ way, unless I’m short on time or at a friends. One way I counter the time factor is to use very hot water and thoroughly soap, I even go up to my elbow’s sometimes. I’m weird with germs though. I hate hand sanitizer and only use it germy situations, like the hospital or public places.

“Of the men who washed, only 50% of men observed for the study used soap??”

If it doesn’t involve soap (or an equivalent alternative) it doesn’t count as washing at all.

@downtide – agreed. That’s called rinsing.

What’s relevant here is one’s hands touching germs or not. Most of the time urine is sterile, but not always.

@mattbrowne I think they have debunked that whole urine is sterile thing. I have read conflicting information on that. I also said above urine is the least of the worries, so we kind of agree in a way about risks.

To me the biggest risks are ecoli, hepatitis (probably very rare in western Europe, it has been very rare in the US, but now TX, and some other border states have more cases, and it is happening in other states as well, but now children are routinely vaccinated for hep A) and catching colds and flu.

A few years ago on the Today Show they went to a local department store (a fancy one) and they swabbed the handrails on the escalator. Among the things they got when they tested the swabbing were vaginal yeast. You know what that means – someone did not wash their hands properly! That’s why in public, before you wash your hands, you should never put your hands to your eyes, nose, mouth, or anywhere on your face.

@JLeslie – To be precise: urine of healthy folks is considered to be of a low-germ nature (almost sterile), unlike doorknobs, keyboards and kitchen rags. This means that health wise it’s more important to wash your hand after touching a doorknob compared to a fresh drop of urine ending up on your hand, at least short term. Stale urine gets changed by bacteria, therefore the smell.

@mattbrowne Right you are. Yes, urine IS a sterile fluid as long as one does not have a bladder infection. Fresh out of the pot piss is far cleaner than your average doorknob, keyboard, or coin. I HATE payphones, on the rare occasion I have had to use one they are #1 on my list of disgusting things to touch.Ewwww!

I once urinated on a nasty leg gash I got from sheet metal roofing because I once heard it was ok, sterile to do that. I must say it never became infected but I think peroxide would have stung less. A lot less.

I just washed my hands before and after my decadent pastry moment here. lol