Recently, there have been a flurry of discussions about proper hygiene practices, especially the importance of clean hands as the No. 1 prevention against spread of infection in the home, in hospitals, in schools and in every workplace. Let me point out that even though frequent hand-washing is the cornerstone of infection control, there is a very serious loophole in hand-washing.
Please consider the following. You have dirty hands with germs. You touch the handle of a water faucet to turn on the water. You wash your hands thoroughly with soap or detergent in order to eliminate the germs on your hands. By touching the water faucet again to turn off the water, however, your hands get re-contaminated by the germs that were left on the handle of the water faucet. When you dry your hands, the germs contaminate the towel, and they comfortably thrive and multiply there!
Meanwhile, there is a promising Canadian invention called "Germ Buster: Sanitary Single-Handle Water Faucet". This very simple technology would help people avoid re-contamination of hands after hand-washing, without requiring electricity or a foot pedal. Unfortunately, leading water faucet manufacturers in North America have shown no interest in bringing this invention to the market because it presents a new paradigm. Please invite your interested readers to send an E-mail message for more information to: <mailto:comments@hyperinfo.ca>
