The Hidden Hygiene Risk That Reaches All Of Us

Read Part One Here

Final Part: Bringing It Home – The Personal Connection

At the End of the Day

Now that the day is over, and as Marco leaves the office he shakes hands with a new employee, congratulating them on a successful first day. Deb grabs a few things for dinner at the market after picking Pablo up from high school. At home, Pablo changes out of his sports uniform and, as is his habit, drops his clothes on the bathroom floor leaving them for Mum to pick up. The family feels satisfied after a good day and looks forward to relaxing, safe and secure at home.

They don’t realise that the new employee carried an infection, and fails to wash their hands regularly after using the restroom; or that those potatoes from the open market display had been handled by several other people before them; and that the change room at the local sports field, which includes a restroom and shower in one large space, is not cleaned regularly or thoroughly.

It's the punch we don't see that usually knocks us out.

One Individual’s Perspective

For me, awareness began at home in the solitude of the toilet, and with my history in hospitality cleaning at home can feel like an extension of work. As a professional baker, I understand microbial systems, growth, and environmental influences not only through daily use of yeast, but also from the need to preserve bread from moulds and other degradation factors after baking.

My food-safety training leads me to look for critical control points – those nexuses where small changes have large downstream effects. In a way, it’s tracing the small-world phenomenon down to the nodes and hubs that connect the networks. Also having hands-on experience within secondary and tertiary food-distribution networks – once I began to look into the problem, putting it all together came naturally.

Personally, if I can reduce the effort needed to maintain a clean home, I can reduce my own resistance and anxiety in the task while increasing hygiene at home.

What Can We Personally Do About It?

With more than 30 years in customer-facing positions and 25 years’ experience in the world of companion parrots and behavioural management (which actually involves changing human behaviour first to encourage the parrot’s behavioural change), I’ve learned that, in our hearts, we want the best for ourselves and those we care about.

The increase in my own awareness of the sources of toilet surface contamination, combined with a desire to elevate my own well-being, has led to the adoption of several new habits, such as incorporating a Thai-style bidet at home and other improvised proactive methods. After adopting these new behaviours, I now feel their absence when I don’t have access to them in public facilities, which reinforces the positive feelings I associate with them.

Why Don’t We Just Change Our Habits?

The crux of this is ease of adoption. We don’t do something new simply because someone tells us it’s better – especially if it’s more complicated than the status quo. A few small, simple changes are acceptable, but even a hint of added effort and people won’t try. That’s why I installed a Thai bidet rather than a more complex system: one adaptor on the tap is all that’s needed versus a bulkier unit and more complex installation.

Looking at different cultures can offer extra insights into our habits. Across humanity, we find wide variation in awareness, attitudes, and methods related to our toilet routines. From Islam to Japan, Thailand to the UK, there are lessons to learn and innovations we can adapt or incorporate. Consider bidets, for example: originating in France, modernised in Japan, adapted in Thailand, and now being adopted more globally.

We adopt new behaviours when we feel the benefits not only personally, but also extending to those around us. This increases our own comfort and creates a sense of altruistic warmth by helping others.

Prisoner’s Dilemma vs Free Will

To make a real impact though, we need more than a few individuals to adopt new habits. Behavioural research on the Prisoner’s Dilemma gives the initial impression that communal cooperation is unlikely, particularly when simulated in networks. However, further study has shown that the real world is more balanced between cooperation and defection than simulations suggest.

At the nexus is choice. We each have the freedom to choose not only our actions but also our network connections. When we see both the benefits of our choices and others in our network making those same beneficial choices, we’re more inclined to cooperate.

Science has shown that it is possible for just one person to influence the world through their actions.

In Conclusion

Much like baking a loaf of bread takes many steps, tools, ingredients, and processes – some proactive, some passive, others reactive – protecting our hygiene and health requires a variety of methods. Tools and innovations that are reactive or passive in nature need to be supplemented with proactive solutions and better habits.

Through individual personal change, habits can grow along the same channels that connect us all and make us both unified and vulnerable. As much as we like to believe we’re each our own island in the storm, looking beneath the surface shows how close we really are to each other and how much the person next to us – as well as the one across the globe – influences our choices and health.

The burden of maintaining hygiene lies not only on those who clean after us but on us ALL to reduce the effort needed for cleaning and improve our quality of life.