Weekly Rounds

[yogcmarthoth]

Originally published at Saint Nickanuck of the Tundra. You can comment here or there.

• Both Laura and I ended up interviewed on television this week - Laura was interviewed as part of a national news segment on the LCROSS mission, and I lent some bouncy-browed advice to a Fox 45 piece on bacterial contamination of food transportation pallets. Mine

Comments

[ralphmelton]

So what are you supposed to do in a restroom without soap or towels? It's not clear to me that this is as much of a problem as the bit about not washing when there is soap present.

[yogcmarthoth]

That's a good point.

The action of washing with soap and water is to form an emulsion layer with the soap that lifts up microscopic bacterial, viruses, etc... from the skin and washes them away. This is far more effective that merely running a stream of water over the hands, even with vigorous rubbing in that latter case.

When I am confronted with a soap-less and towel-less restroom situation, apart from informing the management (if I thought, based on the establishment, that it would do any good), I tend to rinse my hands vigorously under warm water, shake them dry, then seek the nearest place to wash my hands properly.

In my experience, however, places without soap and towels tend also to have issues with warm water, as well...