From Unsuck DC Metro

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Seeing somebody lick their finger to turn the page of their paper and place it back on on the metro pole & repeat makes my stomach turn.

Dr. Flash Gordon writes in a CNN Health Q&A article:

If you then touch the corner of your eye, or lick your finger before turning a page, or open and unwrap a piece of chewing gum and eat it, you've just put those germs into your system. If you don't wash your hands after touching "public objects" and before touching your face or food, you've essentially licked everything you've touched since the last time you washed.

Click here for link to the article.

Josh L. posts in his blog, Daily Encounters with the World

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Dirty Money + Licking your fingers = Unhappy person receiving your money

Do you lick your fingers while you eat? Personally I do and watching other people do so doesn't bother me whatsoever. What does bother me is when people are about to give me some money and they lick their fingers to separate the bills. Do they not realize that I have to touch that money? I know money is dirty anyways, but to add somebody else's saliva is a whole new story. Maybe you've never thought about this before, but after reading this little post you may be surprised at how many people actually do this. If you're one of these people that lick your fingers to separate money or turn pages in a magazine or book please do the world a favor and STOP!

Click link to his blog post

The National Archives of the U.K. instructs users how to handle documents:

Everyone at The National Archives – both staff and readers – has a responsibility and duty to preserve all types of documents in our care for users like yourself, now and in the future.

There are some general practices that should be followed by everyone:

- Wash your hands before you start working and avoid using hand cream.

- Try not to lick your fingers when turning pages.

- Avoid leaning on or touching the document, use a paper marker to the text.

- Use cotton gloves when handling photographs, and hold them by the edges.

Here's the link:

Tish Jones writes in NurseWeek News:

One day a supervisor came into the ICU, sat down at a desk, and started leafing through one of my patient’s charts, licking her fingers each time she turned a page.

I told her to stop licking her fingers because she was exposing herself to hospital germs. Plus, I knew that I would be handling the chart, and I didn’t know what kind of germs she had in her mouth — not to mention where she had been before her visit to our unit.

She told me to wash my hands after I handled the chart.

Her suggestion is probably the best solution, because the only person I can control is myself. It’s my responsibility to protect myself. Perhaps we should put charts high on the list of infection transference. In one day, the chart may be touched by many people from many departments — nursing, dietary, physicians, social services, physical therapy, radiology, pharmacy, respiratory, and more.

So the moral of the story is this: You have not given anyone permission to put you at risk. Yet you are at risk. So to all the finger-lickin’ chart page turners, you have a deadly habit. One day this habit may make you pay for the risk that you take. Hopefully you may recognize that you also share in the responsibility for putting the charts high up on the infectious list. Think about it, when was the last time the charts were cleaned on your unit? Were they ever?

Link to the article: