Opinion: Letter
Sanitation supersedes the environment
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Imagine for a moment you’ve just done your business in Van Hise. You step out of the stall, turn on the water, soap up, scrub your hands clean, turn the water off, turn around and use the high-powered Xelerator hand drier.
Congratulations: You’ve accomplished nothing. You touched the faucet handle after washing and rubbed your hands together under the drier, spreading both your own germs and those of everyone who touched that faucet since the last time it’d been cleaned back onto your hands.
I know we’re trying to be green, but this entire problem can be solved by one simple not-so-eco-friendly solution: a paper towel.
Proper hand washing procedure is to scrub for twenty seconds, dry your hands with towel and then turn the water off using the paper. Voila — no germs spread.
With the norovirus outbreak spreading across campus, our university needs to look at the costs and benefits of not providing towels in all of our restrooms. On one hand, we save some trees, which is extremely admirable. On the other hand, the lack of towels in the dorms causes many students not to bother washing, since the hand driers they have are inefficient and promote the spread of bacteria and viruses anyway.
There is, of course, an alternative to towels. The university could install automatic faucets, soap dispensers and hand driers in all restrooms. Perhaps this would be more cost effective in the long run. Whatever happens, something needs to be done to keep UW’s students healthy.
We need to be rational in our approach to stay green. I’m as big a screeching leftie as any of us, but if we’re sacrificing our own health for a few blue spruces, we need to reexamine our priorities. I think if you ask any student whether they’d rather have a logger fell a tree in
Let’s stay rational. Let’s stay healthy.
Tyler Junger
UW sophomore, political science
tjunger@wisc.edu
9 Comments | Leave a comment
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Well said. Replanted trees grow quickly (forests get harvested every 20 years or so in Minnesota and Wisconsin) and eat up a lot of CO2 in the process.
Some buildings (like the Union) have paper towels, while others have only unsanitary air dryers. It’s sad.
Yes! Finally! Take it to the pervasive hand dryers. I want towels!
So by installing the old paper towel machines the problem will be solved? I think not. Look at the number of people that go to the bathrooms just to blow their nose. Do you think they wash their hands before they touch the level on the paper towel dispenser? You make a valid point in your letter but your solution has the same flaws. No matter what you do you’re not going to be able to keep your world germ free (aside from living in a bubble). Think about all the people that cough on their hands and then reach for the door handle to a building. Do you propose that the University install automatic doors in every building to solve that problem, too?
Tyler,
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Y-A-W-N…what a waste of space. Must be a slow news day.
@ 9:05. The point of bathroom faciilites is sanitation. By your logic, since we can’t live germ free, we might as well defecate all over the place. Maybe that’s how you live your germ pervasive existence, but you can count the rest of Madison out. Except for a few hippies on Willy Street.
But wait, they told me that the electric dryer would eliminate disease causing paper towel waste.
Good joke is to plaster all the electric dryers with warning stickers:
DO NOT OPERATE ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT WITH WET HANDS!!!
@12:14 I wasn’t saying anything to reduce the need for sanitation at all. The point of my comment was to show that putting paper towels in the bathroom so people can shut off the water faucet is pointless and there are many other ways people can come in contact with germs. There’s also a difference between not washing your hands after using the bathroom and not washing your hands after playing with feces. Your comment about defecating anywhere made absolutely no sense.
It’s Not a Tumor - Doctors Find Worm In Woman’s Brain Instead
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,455067,00.html
key quote: “…it can be spread by people who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, according to the report.”
Alvarez said she hopes people learn this lesson from her story.
“Wash your hands, wash your hands.”