Okay, so I did this Toolbox Safety Talk here along with a video on washing your hands. And I have to admit that when I first heard safety professionals taking significant time (near 10 minutes) during the 2008 ASSE New England Conference & Expo to cover how to wash your hands during a session on hygiene, I sneered at it thinking “What is this and why are we wasting time on how to wash our hands?!”
But, like many of my knee-jerk reactions when I’m presented with new material or concepts, I was terribly wrong! It’s so important. I can’t tell you the number of times since 2008 when I’ve been in restrooms at airports, restaurants, manufacturing facilities and other public venues that I’ve noticed men who either don’t wash their hands at all or simply run some water over their hands for less than 2 seconds without soap! And there are other variations of this.
Like I say in the video, the key to washing your hands is to wet them, get a lot of lather going with the soap you have, and then scrub or rub your hands together for the duration of the alphabet song or the birthday song. (I actually sing in this video!) And finally -of course- take ample time to thoroughly rinse your hands off with running water. It is not a 5 to 10-second thing, but rather more like a 30-second thing.
I’ll leave you with a final story: a couple of years ago during an OSHA 10 hour Construction Outreach Training I was conducting in Spanish, someone stood up and told me that his dad taught him that you should wash your hands before you go to the bathroom because your hands are dirty from all the tasks that you do throughout the day. (And -no- this guy was not Mexican. I won’t tell you from which country he came from.) Well, that’s a good idea. A very good idea. But the problem was he proceeded to debate me and others in the class for several minutes saying that it was not necessary to wash your hands after using the bathroom (#1), because you are “clean down there”! We were all shocked and did our best to impress upon him that Hepatitis A comes from people cooking and eating food after having gone to the bathroom without washing their hands afterward! (For your Seinfeld fans: Remember Poppy?!!) For those of you who don’t remember or didn’t see that episode, I’ll write another blog post or even make another video on that for you coming up soon!
So, in summary and just like you see in this video, please take the time necessary to wet your hands, lather them up with soap, rub them together good (don’t forget under your fingernails), and -finally- to rinse them off thoroughly with running water. Teach this to your employees and to your children.
Until next time,
Steve
Spanish OSHA Guy!