Living with pets should require obsessive hand washing
By Phyllis DeGioia
October 7, 2009
I’ve always been a rather neurotic hand washer, even before I had non-specific hepatitis not once but twice (once idiopathic, once from a blood transfusion). I hate anything sticky on my hands, and so I wash after eating an apple or something that drips, or after cleaning the kitchen or bathroom. Knitting dries my hands. Sadly, thanks to genetics I also have fairly dry skin.
I am completely predisposed to be the ultimate neurotic hand washer (everyone has to excel at something). Every winter my hands get dry enough from the excessive hand washing to crack and bleed, no matter how many gooey bottles of creams I use.
Imagine my life with pets: I’m a walking advertisement for obsessive compulsive hand washing. But it’s my argument that when you live with pets, you should wash your hands more often than you probably do. I have never once had any health issue that resulted from handling pets or their food, not when I feed raw, pick up poop, clean litter boxes daily, get licked, or take care of cuts and scrapes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends hand washing as a preventive measure for many illnesses, and they emphasize it strongly as a preventive measure for pet owners, mostly after cleaning up feces:
- Washing hands with soap and water after handling rodents or their cages and bedding is the most important thing you can do to reduce the risk of Salmonella transmission.
- To protect yourself from cat-related diseases: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and running water after touching cat feces (stool).
- Although birds can spread germs to people, illness caused by touching or owning birds is rare. To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with birds or their droppings.
- To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with dogs, dog saliva, or dog feces (stool).
- Although horses can pass diseases to people, you are not likely to get sick from touching or owning them. However, when you do common chores with horses, such as cleaning stalls, grooming them, and picking out their feet, you are probably touching manure without knowing it. To protect yourself from getting sick, you should thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with horses or their manure.
- Therefore, people can also get salmonellosis if they do not wash their hands after touching the feces of animals. Reptiles (lizards, snakes, and turtles), baby chicks, and ducklings are especially likely to pass salmonellosis to people. Dogs, cats, birds (including pet birds), horses, and farm animals can also pass Salmonella in their feces.
Worried about the flu pandemic this year? Uncle Sam (CDC) wants you to wash your hands. “Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.”
Since I’m neurotic about washing my hands, I’ve made some changes in hopes of not having my hands get so dry they crack and bleed. The big change is that I switched to hand-made soap because the detergent in commercial soaps dries your hands more (in both bar and liquid), and it definitely helped. I rarely use the drying sanitizer in the kitchen. Just a couple of weeks ago I added a chlorine filter to my shower faucet so that all my skin – not just my hands – won’t get so dry.
If you don’t neurotically wash your hands, I recommend becoming at least semi-neurotic during this season of the pandemic H1N1, as beyond other considerations you can’t care well for your pets when you’re ill. (Calling it swine flu is a misnomer, as H1N1 is a triple-reassortment strain of viruses affecting humans, swine, and birds. Let’s not malign pigs.) That’s common sense for this season in particular, but it’s also always common sense for pet owners. The possibility of zoonotic transmission of diseases is lessened by washing your hands after certain tasks (or in the case of some pets, such as reptiles, after handling the pets themselves). Above and beyond the flu, be smart and protect yourself with good sanitary practices so that you never have to consider rehoming a pet because of a disease you could have prevented. Lather up!
I’ve always been a thorough hand-washer, what with dogs and cats and a leopard gecko and various other pets. But now that we’ve got 13 laying hens that I cuddle regularly, I’m particularly neurotic about cleaning my hands. If only my dogs were as fastidious! And I wish they’d stop attempting to kiss me after snacking on chicken poop outside. :P
If my informal surveys of women washing (or not) their hands after using public restrooms is any indication of the frequency of hand-washing in general, most of the world population needs to read this blog article and take it seriously. People just do not wash their hands adequately, if at all! No wonder colds and the flu spread the way they do. Do us all a favour and lather up, people!
Comment by Natalie R — October 7, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
I am also a frequent hand-washer. Got into that habit after many years of typing transcripts using carbon paper, which would cause smudges. I’m sure lots of the younger folks now have never seen a piece of carbon paper!
Anyhow, I also have dry skin which is more of a problem in the wintertime and causes cracked/chapped hands. I did read one tip that said if you wash your hands in cold water (as opposed to hot) it will not tend to dry your skin so much.
Another thing I found is that if I take a multivitamin daily during the winter my skin does a lot better.
Comment by Mary — October 7, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
I’m a dedicated hand washer after doing anything with the reptiles and after cleaning the cat box. But washing after touching the dogs or dog saliva? No, I’m not there. Heck, my hands would be wet all the time!
Now I am good about not touching my face, especially mouth or nose, after touching the dogs and I do wash my hands before I eat.
I also make sure I don’t touch my face when pushing a grocery cart - or anything else that someone else has touched.
Hmmm….kind of sad that we have to think this way.
Comment by Liz Palika — October 7, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
I also suffer from ultra-dry and cracking skin in the winter. I found a good local brand of unscented hand lotion called “Working Hands”. As for lickety kisses, I consider dog saliva to be the elixir of youth.
Comment by Martha M — October 7, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
Some days I’m amazed at how often my hands are in soap and water. So often I’ve just washed and dried them and then immediately go do something that I need to wash them again. Agree owning pets makes one more aware of the need for clean hands.
Comment by VJ — October 7, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
I don’t see how anyone considers washing your hands after touching the feces, saliva, or other bodily ickiness of *any* animal (including yourself) to be either obsessive or compulsive.
It’s called HYGIENE people!
Comment by Janeen — October 7, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
My mother always told us that if we didn’t wash our hands, we’d get the bots. Imagine my surprise when I learned it was a real disease (horses).
Comment by Kim Thornton — October 7, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
I’m not frequent hand-washer. I have a cat and I wash hands after him only when I’m going to eat.
Comment by Kiolva — October 7, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
Washing hands after cleaning up feces is not obessive at all, but smart. It’s my OCD preference to wash my hands after eating an apple, touching something slightly sticky, etc that puts me into OCD territory.
Glad to know I’m not alone! Grocery carts and public bathroom door handles are a real concern for me.
Comment by Phyllis DeGioia — October 8, 2009 @ 6:00 am
Washing after feces exposure (such as cleaning the litter box) is sound “germ management”. But after exposure to the animal itself? We should wash “after contact with dogs, dog saliva”?
Then why have an animal at all? If I washed after every contact with my dog or his saliva, I too would have cracked, bleeding hands, which, of course, actually increases one’s chance of getting an infection.
Comment by K.B. — October 8, 2009 @ 6:47 am
I’m a compulsive hand washer too,I think its just common sense ! All of our grocery stores have wipes by the carts for the handles & seats & sanitizer. They also have it by the meat & fish depts. I also carry wipes & sanitizer in my purse & car.And yes my hands are always chapped.
Comment by Leslie K — October 8, 2009 @ 6:55 am
I wash my hands a lot lot lot lot lot. But I would never turn off the tap if I washed when exposed to dog spit. So that … I takes my chances.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — October 8, 2009 @ 8:15 am
Exactly. I’d have to live in the kitchen sink to wash after touching a dog.
Comment by Phyllis DeGioia — October 8, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
Interesting. I’ve always considered my self neurotic about having clean hands but never because of my companion animals unless something gross happened (and gross is gross and ergo can not be neurosis). Even then it was because it was gross and not because it was them.
Comment by mare — October 8, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
I have to use Jason’s Satin Soap and Jason’s Vitamin E creme or else the skin on my fingers and hands crack and turn red.
I do especially wash my hands after touching cat kibble—afraid of salmonella.
It is very dry in this semi-arid where I live so my hands would be dry, anyway—especially with winter almost here.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — October 9, 2009 @ 6:20 am
As a physical therapist assistant, I work with a lot of really sick people and am in close physical contact with them. I wash my hands a lot…. at work. (I also see how poorly people wash their own hands and what they touch after using the toilet. Ewww. Piece of advice: let the faucet run after washing in a public restroom and use the towels you’ve used to dry your hands to turn it off. Then get a fresh towel to open the bathroom door.)
Frankly, I’m way more worried about bringing a bug home from work to my dogs and bird than I am catching anything from them! People are way more disgusting than my regularly bathed animals. As for contact with horses, I considered it to be an immune-boosting experience. (Afterall, all sorts of fecal matter is in barn dust — can’t avoid it!) If a person is that hung-up about hygiene, horses are not for them!
Why is anyone touching the feces of anything directly anyway except by accident? Ewww.
Kim, “bots” isn’t a disease, but bot flys do lay their eggs on horses’ legs. I could explain the whole life-cycle of the bot fly, which includes the horse ingesting the eggs unless the caretaker scrapes them off, but I have a feeling it’d be TMI. :-)
Carry on.
Comment by Deanna — October 11, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
Gina, I’m so there with you on the dog spit issue…in fact, I’m even worse. You see, Boston Terriers are determined not just to kiss you on the lips, but if they can catch you off guard, they can and will go right on past your lips and get really intimate. At this point, if I haven’t developed antibodies to whatever Logan has, I should be dead.
After handling raw food or poop, though, out comes the antibacterial soap.
Comment by Susan — October 11, 2009 @ 7:59 pm