How clean are public bathrooms?
Dr. Gerba also conducted studies of public restrooms. In the mid-1970s he numbered squares of toilet paper in public restrooms and checked them hourly to gauge how many were used. Twenty years later, with a grant from the Scott Paper Company, he did the same experiment, this time with microprocessors in the dispensers, and found that men used an average of two squares per visit and women used seven. He discovered which sex had dirtier bathrooms (women, by far), and where the bacterial hot zones were in bathrooms (outside sanitary napkin disposals, the floor and the sink, in that order; the doorknob is surprisingly clean). The average employee uses the bathroom 3.3 times per working day, and women spend twice as much time in the bathroom as men.” What does the future hold? Dr. Gerba “predicts that infectious disease, or microbe-caused illness will become more prevalent, explaining that antibiotic resistance, our aging drinking water infrastructure, and emerging pathogens will give micro
