Rosemount High School has a disgusting problem. Hundreds of students visit the school bathrooms everyday, and still nobody realizes the nasty truth hidden from the naked eye. Hundreds of millions of bacteria linger all around you, festering on the bathroom surfaces, and infiltrating our bodies.

Near the end of last school year, I ran an experiment that unveiled the horrific spawn of the school bathrooms. My testing grounds consisted of one female and one male bathroom. I gathered bacteria from multiple surfaces including my own hands and stored them inside glass Petri dishes. After one week of being able to incubate, there was noticeable significant growth inside of every dish. What used to be an empty plate was now speckled with several huge colonies of bacteria that had developed over the span of a week.

From what I observed of the results, I recognized several of the dishes contained bacteria that very closely resembled common diseases a lot of us are familiar with. For example the bacteria that was on sink knobs (Dish 4) looked like streptococcus. Several other dishes contained bacteria that appeared to be Rhinovirus, also known as the Common Cold. Luckily your immune system can usually handle these diseases, but it cannot do it alone. Hand washing plays an important role in defending yourself against bacteria.

When you are inside of a bathroom, you are exposing yourself to millions of pathogens that can cause several different kinds of illnesses. Fortunately, humans evolved to have complex systems in place to defend ourselves against infections. But sometimes your immune system isn’t good enough to protect you. Pathogens can adapt much faster than our immune systems, which means that sometimes the germs that enter our body may be able to evade our defenses. Other factors such as unhealthy lifestyle choices may also affect your body’s immune system from working productively. This is where handwashing is an effective behavior to have as a habit because it is proven to help eliminate germs that could have potentially spread from your skin onto surfaces or into your body. As you should have learned from kindergarten, the best way to wash your hands is to use warm water and soap, and scrub for 20 seconds. Yes, 20 seconds is the minimum amount of time you should be spending in order to properly get rid of the germs that have definitely found their way onto your body, any less time spent washing your hands and you will not have successfully cleaned them. While the soap itself does not kill bacteria or viruses, soap is also essential to successfully cleaning your hands. It assists on a molecular level by breaking down the molecules of the microorganisms and carrying them off with the water.

(Gracia Lam, 2021)

Here in Rosemount, we are fortunate enough to have air dryers which allows us to avoid touching any more surfaces than what we have to. But when you think about it, where are these air dryers getting this air from? They draw in bacteria from the surrounding air and blow it straight on to your hands, leaving you with hands that are just as dirty as they were before. I cannot stress any more about avoiding using the air dryers to dry your hands. 

In the future, keep in mind the immense amount of bacteria that you are surrounded by whenever you are in our school bathrooms. I implore you to think about your hygiene and the consequences of not properly washing your hands. Washing your hands correctly is incredibly important because it can both keep ourselves healthy and slow the spread of illnesses and germs. Keep it clean, Rosemount.