20 Seconds to Optimize Hand Wellness
One of the world’s most crucial and selfless acts is still simply washing your hands.
It’s a familiar situation in a public restroom: You’re on your way in, and someone else is leaving without washing their hands. They see you, and wheel around toward the sink. They start whistling, as if to seem casual, and then give their hands a quick spritz with water.
Even among people who will never see each other again, there’s a compulsion to perform a tiny baptism of the fingertips: Not enough scrubbing or soap to actually remove a virus, just enough to signal civility. Accordingly many Americans’ standard of what constitutes a washing of the hands is abysmal. Studies have put the average hand-washing time at about , less of us regularly wash long and thoroughly enough.
