Call (206) 219-5306 to speak with a licensed insurance agent.

Call (206) 219-5306 to speak with a licensed insurance agent.

What We Can Learn from National Handwashing Awareness Week

Posted by Nate Root, December 5, 2019

The first week of December serves as National Handwashing Awareness Week. While the idea of dedicating an entire awareness campaign to handwashing seems silly on the surface, regularly washing your hands is actually one of the most important steps you can take toward protecting both personal and public health.

Just check out these statistics:

  • 80 percent of communicable diseases are transferred by person-to-person contact (touching each other or communal items like shopping carts and door handles)
  • Pneumonia, cold, and flu are spread by simply touching your face with dirty hands
  • Pneumonia is the number one cause of death in children
  • Washing your hands several times per day reduces your odds of contracting diarrhea by 40 percent
  • Flushing a toilet (with the lid up) spreads bacteria and viruses over six square meters
  • Sinks in public bathrooms are 90 percent covered with bacteria from flushing toilets
  • Studies show that people who regularly wash their hands take 24 percent fewer sick days from work due to respiratory illness, and 51 percent fewer sick days due to gastrointestinal illness
  • More than 25 percent of women don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom
  • More than 50 percent of men don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom

Bacteria and viruses on our hands quickly transfer to any surface we touch. Then, someone else touches that surface, touches their face (or eats food that they’ve touched), and the result is illness that quickly spreads through a community.

Wash your hands after using the bathroom, and after preparing foods (both raw meat and fresh produce can carry germs).

Washing your hands several times per day will greatly reduce the transmission of most illnesses, and will protect both you and the rest of your community. In particular, we can all do our part to protect children and the immune-compromised.

Need more information?

Contact us online to learn more

Contact Us

Close Accessibility Tools
Accessibility Controls Reset
Content Adjustments
Font Size

Default

Line Height

Default

Content Scaling

Default

Highlight Titles
Highlight Links
Highlight Forms
Align Left
Align Center
Align Right
Focus Mode
Color Adjustments
Desaturate
Monochrome
Contrast

Default

Saturation

Default

Accessibility Statement

Despite our attempts to make this website accessible for everyone, there may still be some pages or sections that are not completely accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or do not have a suitable technological solution to make them accessible. Nevertheless, we are always striving to enhance our accessibility by adding, updating, improving its options and features, and incorporating new technologies.

We want to provide our users with the best experience possible, so we strive to support as many browsers and assistive technologies as possible.

If you wish to contact this website's owner, please use the contact form on the website.

Our User Interface Adjustment Options

Font adjustments - With this tool, users can modify font size, style, letter spacing, and line height for improved alignment and readability.

Color adjustments - Users can customize their color contrast profiles to light, dark, desaturated, and monochrome.

Content highlighting - Users can prioritize key elements such as links, forms, and titles.

Content focus - Users can enable focus mode to highlight the current page information based on their mouse movement.

Close