Foot-Handle for Public Restrooms

Brilliant!

Yes please!!! I hate using public restrooms, but when ya gotta go ya gotta go and it would be nice not having to handle something that probably has stuff on it that I don't care to think about after washing my hands.

Can't you just buy surplus bubble boy bubbles instead?

If you're that germiphobic - best just stay away from the rest of your species.

Oh, not germs, Vonskippy - it's the grossness of grabbing things that someone else has touched after touching their genitals without washing their hands afterwards.

From a 2005 NY Times article by Nicholas Bakalar:

In the nationwide poll, conducted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22 by Harris Interactive, 1,013 adults were interviewed about their hand washing habits. Then observers were sent into public restrooms to see what actually happened.

Ninety-one percent of adults claimed in the poll that they washed their hands after using a public restroom. But of the 6,336 adults whose behavior was observed, only 82 percent actually did so.

Cecil Adams has a classic column on The Straight Dope on this.

They observed people in bathrooms, Alex? That's more disturbing than germs.

@ted - absolutely! When I was in grad school (in a hospital), there was a study about the hand washing habit of doctors.

They had assumed that male doctors washed their hands more often than the general public, simply because they're doctors and they should know better.

So someone devised a study to watch these docs. They pretended they were fussing with their hair, washing their glasses, etc. They noticed a significant percentage of doctors never washed their hands!

I tried to Google the study, but couldn't find it. I remember the outcome of the study, because right after I read it, I was in the bathroom and a professor (who's also a practicing doctor) came in, did his business, and left without washing his hands!

I saw one of these in a restroom at a BBQ restaurant. Hopefully they'll become more common place.

In places where they use those unsanitary air blowers, I end up using my sleeve to open the door.

Speaking of the air blowers, in Dallas County (TX) health codes require employees to use a paper towel to turn off the tap after washing and drying their hands. And I find these notices in places where there are no paper towels available. wtf?

Why don't they just make bathroom doors open out? Who cares about the handle going in, and then open with your elbow, hip or foot going out. Am I missing something obvious here?

or just clean the place more often...reminds me of a study that came to the conclusion that in a high amount of the cases the toilet bowl had less germs than the kitchen top. Mostly due to powerful chemicals/huge amounts of water in the toilet and the simple wipe over the kitchen.

I like Mile's (#8) logic.

I remember that my sister broke her finger when a heavy bathroom door shut on it and had to have her fingernail punched.
Foot handles would be great!

How about sanitizer dispensers in the stalls?
For when you have to flush and touch the slide lock before you get to the sink.

I'm ALL FOR IT. I never, ever touch that nasty door handle with my bare hands.

@w w - I'd expect the door to open against the flow of traffic. So opening a door into a rest room is preferable than opening it out onto a busy hallway.

genius! i totally agree with Alex that it's really more the grossness that i'm thinking about when i touch the door than it is the germs. not only have people who didn't wash their hands touched their own 'stuff', but if they were in a stall, they had to touch the handle to get out and that handle has been touched by every single person who just got done touching their 'stuff'. so you're touching a lot of peoples 'stuff' there.

I love the idea.

I usually use the paper towel - I grab paper towel, wash, dry with paper towel and use paper towel to turn taps off with.

Public bathrooms are revolting, regardless of how often they are cleaned.

Call me a germaphobe, but choose not to have remnants of other people's #1 and #2

nice invention but bathroom doors dont open inwards if they do then it was designed wrong.......primary bathroom doors open outward because a properly designed restroom has negative air pressure so the stink in the bathroom dont get out....the negative pressure in the room will keep opening the door sucking all the smell of the nice resturant food right up the fart fan and not ciculate for everyone to enjoy

wow. I like how you're all worried about touching doors but not shaking hands or anything else. Skin is skin you weirdos, and quite frankly the skin on someone's d~ck is cleaner than your face which has been touched by your hand which has been on a table or computer keyboard etc. I agree with the poster who says you dainty little daffodils should definitely excuse yourself from the rest of the species.

Use paper towel to open doors?

George Carlin did a nice dialog about germs.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s

It is appropriate that you played this first on a PI-ano. By the way, they ought to have tuned the piano first, before making the recording. Nonetheless, an interesting post!

Nice idea.
A new restaurant near me has a handle that looks like a branch or something. The idea there is you put your forearm in it to open the door.