MONDAY, Sept. 15, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Add germs to the list of dangers associated with air travel.
A new survey released Monday by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) reveals that more than one in five travelers neglect to wash their hands after using airport restrooms.
Hand washing has been proven to be an effective and cheap weapon against the spread of a variety of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, including SARS, Norwalk virus and the flu. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year 10 percent to 20 percent of U.S. residents contract the flu, more than 100,000 are hospitalized, and an average of 36,000 actually die from the disease. Flu season generally starts in October and lasts until mid-May.
Travel is a key factor in the spread of many illnesses. "Infectious disease is very international, and we're such a fluid society right now," says Judy Daly, ASM secretary and a professor of pathology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "Your hands are a great vector to transfer bugs from one surface to another. You can use hand washing as an intervention for gastrointestinal disease as well as respiratory disease."
The ASM put observers in airport lavatories at six major airports in North America. The observers pretended to be grooming themselves and rotated out regularly so they would not arouse suspicions. All in all, 7,539 men and women were observed either washing or not washing their hands in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Toronto.
Overall, the researchers found 22 percent of the passengers didn't wash up before leaving the bathrooms. New York's John F. Kennedy airport had the dirtiest travelers, with 29 percent of people leaving washrooms without washing. In Chicago, Miami and San Francisco, roughly 26 percent didn't stop to wash their hands. The airport in Dallas/Fort Worth seemed to have the cleanest travelers, with only 19 percent failing to visit the sink in the washroom.
Toronto scored the highest, with 95 percent of men and 97 percent of women washing their hands before leaving the restroom. Toronto suffered a major outbreak of SARS this year, and it's quite possible that that scare is responsible for the high level of hygiene there.
It's possible these numbers are actually higher than they would be, as some people feel compelled to wash their hands when they feel someone is watching.
In general, men were less likely (26 percent) to wash than were women (17 percent), but San Francisco was a glaring exception. That airport had the lowest rate of males failing to wash outside of Toronto (20 percent) and the highest rate of women who left unwashed (41 percent). Chicago had the highest rate of men who failed to wash, with 38 percent, with JFK passengers coming in a close second.
These figures contrast starkly with results from a follow-up telephone survey of 1,000 Americans. Of these, 95 percent said they did wash their hands in public restrooms. Only 58 percent said they washed their hands after sneezing or coughing, and 77 percent said they washed their hands after changing a diaper.
Hands do seem to be getting cleaner, however. In a similar survey conducted in 2000, 67 percent of people were observed washing their hands, and 68 percent were observed washing their hands in 1996.
The ASM has announced it will intensify its educational initiatives, with the Take Action: Clean Hands Campaign.
"It's such a wonderful, economical thing that you can do, 15 seconds rubbing your hands with regular plain soap and drying with a towel is an excellent intervention," Daly says. "If we can do that, we can reduce the transmission of disease."
More information
For more on the hand-washing initiative, visit the Clean Hands Campaign. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has information on hand-washing.
