10% of toilet users don't wash their hands

By Jessica Lim and Shuli Sudderuddin & Kua Zhen Yang

STUDENT Judia Ngo, 21, walks out of the toilet cubicle, looks into the mirror and fixes her hair.
She then leaves the loo - without doing what mothers have always reminded their children to do: Wash your hands!

Her reasoning: Her hands did not come into contact with faecal matter and are clean.

Miss Ngo is not the only one who thinks this way.

The Sunday Times staked out 18 public toilets - in shopping centres, foodcourts and hawker centres - to flush out the truth about hand-washing.

A dirty secret was uncovered: One in 10 toilet-goers did not wash his hands.

Some just wiped their hands on handkerchiefs while others said they washed only after 'big business' and 'never thought of washing after urinating'.

In all, 75 out of 792 people were spotted not washing up.

But dirty hands carrying just a few germs could still cause big problems.

Since Nov 23, at least 153 people have come down with food poisoning after eating PrimaDeli bakery's chocolate cakes.

At least eight of them have since tested positive for salmonella enteritidis which causes fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Salmonella can be spread by food handlers with dirty hands. Eight of PrimaDeli's workers have tested positive for the strain.

This episode prompted letters to The Straits Times Forum about the shocking number of tertiary students who merely 'wetted their hands under the tap and did not use soap'.