Neatorama » hygiene

Florence Nightingale’s Statistical Diagrams

Miss Cellania — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:24:48 +0000

We know Florence Nightingale as the founder of nursing as a profession, but she was also an accomplished statistician and graph maker. More importantly, she used statistical graphs to push for social change, particularly for the use of hygiene to improve health. After the Crimean War, she published a series of graphs in different forms to show that more soldiers died of disease than from battle, and more soldiers than civilians died of disease in peacetime. The graph forms are referred to as “bat’s wing”, “Lines,” and “coxcomb” or “wedge.”

However, it is the last graphic – the successor to the “bat’s wing” which I will call the “wedges” – that Nightingale is most famous for. Strangely enough, the name that many people give it is wrong. This graphic is not what Nightingale referred to as the “coxcomb”!

In this diagram, Nightingale resolved the problem of the “bat’s wing” by using areas to represent the variation in the death rate, instead of the length of radial lines. The blue wedges, representing death by sickness, are far bigger than those representing wounds. The message of this graphic is twofold: first, most of the fatalities during the war were from sickness and second, improvements in hygiene dramatically reduced the death rate.

Link -via Metafilter

See the full-size 1858 graph at Wikipedia.

Cash Machines are as Dirty as Public Toilets

J.P. Cole — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:04:32 +0000

If you get your filthy lucre from an ATM, you may want to bring along some hand sanitizer. A study conducted in England found the average cash machine to be as dirty—and carry the same germs—as public toilets:

Experts took swabs from the numeric key pads on a string of city centre ATMs around England which are used by thousands of shoppers every day.

They then took similar swabs from the seats of nearby public toilets and compared the bacteria under microscopes in a lab.

The samples from both locations were found to contain pseudomonads and bacillus, bacterias which are known to cause sickness and diarrhoea.

[. . .]

Dr Richard Hastings, microbiologist for BioCote, the anti-bacterial firm which carried out the research, said: “We were interested in comparing the levels of bacterial contamination between heavily-used ATM machines and public toilets.

“We were surprised by our results because the ATM machines were shown to be heavily contaminated with bacteria; to the same level as nearby public toilets.

Link | Photo by Flickr user davidwg used under Creative Commons license

Wash Your Hands With Plasma Gas

John Farrier — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:55:14 +0000

A new cleaning technology could replace or supplement the soap, water, and disinfectants used at hospitals to wash hands. Plasma gas sprayed on hands through machines developed by researchers in Germany can kill bacteria and other biological contaminants:

The technology is being developed in several laboratories. Gregor Morfill, who created several prototypes using the technology at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, says the plasma quickly inactivates not only bacteria but also viruses and fungi.

Dr. Morfill and his colleagues have tested their devices on hands and feet. “It works on athlete’s foot,” he said. “And the nice thing is, you don’t have to take your socks off. They are disinfected, too.”[...]

The first products to reach hospitals, after surface cleaners and instrument disinfectants, will probably be hand sanitizers, said Alexander Fridman, a professor and director of the Drexel Plasma Institute at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Does the photo remind anyone else of the pain box from Dune?

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Phil Wilson/NYT

Food Safety Songs

Miss Cellania — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:25:05 +0000

Dr. Carl Winter takes popular songs and changes the lyrics to incorporate food safety instructions. The results are funny! I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles becomes You Better Wash Your Hands, Heartache Tonight is turned into Stomachache Tonight, and We Are The Champions becomes We Are the Microbes. Many songs have accompanying videos. Link -via Eat Me Daily