Last week marked the 25th annual International Infection Prevention Week. The week of awareness celebrated the importance of preventing infection. I, for one, took this week seriously and threw confetti in the air and played Journeys’s “Separate Ways” while I washed my hands. I can’t wait until national hand washing week in December. It’s going to be a blast.
These two awareness weeks do, however, bring attention to an issue I have with the campus facilities, more specifically, the bathrooms. No matter how conscious of microbial interactions you are, at least consider the contact you make with germs in the bathrooms on campus. Some things you should not touch include toilet handles — over 40,000 germs can live on one of these. Luckily, you can shield yourself from this with a flimsy layer of toilet paper.
As effective as toilet paper may be, I still want to know: where are the automatic flushing toilets and the “wave to receive” paper towel dispensers? I’m not worried that I will get a cold in the next few months. I know I’m going to get a cold. I just want to help other people not get one too.
Upgrading the school would not be cheap. The systems cost up to around $400 each and require installing. But they are well worth the cost of keeping the NSU community healthier, and it would modernize the last place the school thought to look, the bathroom.
