你洗手的方式是错的吗?

Are you washing and drying your hands wrong?

　　洗手这件事看似简单，其实不然。有很多证据证实，在如厕、吃饭或乘坐公交地铁后洗手能够降低感染疾病的几率。但是，能够每天以正确方式洗手的人只有5%。

　　Now wash your hands! It sounds straightforward, but it isn’t. Although there’s plenty of evidence that washing your hands after you’ve been to the loo, before eating, or after travelling on public transport can reduce the spread of disease, only 5% of people wash their hands properly all the time.

　　一项针对3,000多人的调查发现，有10%的人使用公共厕所后没有洗手，而在那些洗了手的人中，则有多达33%的人没用肥皂。我们每天都会用手接触自己的脸，从而让病菌从手上转移到鼻子和嘴上并最终进入人体。巴西和美国的研究人员发现，在公共空间，我们平均每小时会接触各类物体3.3次，而每小时我们会接触自己的嘴或鼻子3.6次。

　　An observational study of more than 3,000 people found 10% left public toilets without washing them at all and even if they did, 33% didn’t use soap. This matters because, unfortunately, we can’t resist touching our faces, allowing germs to spread nicely from our hands to our noses and mouths, where they can get into the body. Researchers in Brazil and the US found that we touch surfaces in public spaces an average of 3.3 times an hour and we touch our mouths or noses about 3.6 times an hour.

　　很显然，我们应当以正确方式洗手。问题在于，坊间流传的很多洗手小贴士都是错的。

　　So it’s clear that we need to wash our hands properly. The problem is there are plenty of myths out there about how to do it.

　　Does the water need to be hot to get your hands clean? 热水洗手才干净吗?

　　一项针对500名美国成年人士的调查发现，有69%的人认为水温会对洗手效果产生影响。热量能够杀灭细菌，这是对的(这就是我们需要吃热食的原因)，然而要想达到能够杀灭皮肤细菌的水平，水就必须滚烫才行。例如，沙门氏菌能够在55摄氏度的环境下生存10分钟以上。你要是用这么热的水洗手，用不了30秒，你的皮肤就会严重烫伤。

　　In a survey of 500 adults in the US, 69% believed that the temperature of the water has an impact on the effectiveness of handwashing. It is true that heat can kill bacteria (which is why we need to make sure certain foods are piping hot when we eat them), but the water would need to be scalding for this to happen on your skin. Salmonella, for example, can survive temperatures of 55C for more than 10 minutes. If you washed your hands in water this hot you would have serious burns before 30 seconds were up.

　　为了了解用不同水温的水洗手后手上残留的微生物数量，佛罗里达州的研究人员采用了一种名为“手套-果汁技术”的手段(这里的果汁不是能喝的那种)。实验中，先用生牛肉末擦志愿者的手，然后用不同温度的水洗手。志愿者然后戴上乳胶手套，用一种特殊溶液灌到手套里。志愿者用一分钟的时间按摩双手，以确保手上残留细菌完全进入溶液，然后用吸液管采集手套内溶液，在实验室里进行检测。研究者发现，无论用冷水、热水还是温水洗手，手上残留的细菌数量都没有显著差异。

　　To find out exactly how many microbes remain on our hands after washing in water ranging in temperature from 4.4C to 50C (39.9F to 122F), researchers in Florida used a method known as the glove-juice technique (though it’s not a juice you’d want to drink). Volunteers’ hands were wiped with a bacterial soup or with raw minced beef. Then their hands were washed in water of a certain temperature before they put on latex gloves and a special solution was poured into the gloves. After a minute of hand massage through the glove to make sure all those bacteria got into the liquid, the glove juice was collected using a pipette, ready for testing in the lab. They found that whether the water was cold, hot or middling made no statistically significant difference to the quantity of bacteria remaining on people’s hands.

　　然而，要是我们由此而在公共厕所里取消热水龙头，恐怕并非一个好主意。要知道，人类行为是很奇特的。在上述实验中，受试者的洗手时间都是固定的。但在真实生活中，如果水温很高或很低，我们就不会洗很长时间的手，而让人感觉舒适的温水则会让我们在洗手池边站更长时间。

　　But before the hot taps are ripped out of public toilets, we shouldn’t forget the vagaries of human behaviour. In these experiments the hand washing was carefully timed, but in real life if the water is very hot or very cold, then we tend not to wash our hands for long. Just showing our hands the water isn’t enough, and some nice warm water might encourage us to tarry a while by the wash basin.

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