Male commuters in north and south England: risk factors for the presence of faecal bacteria on hands

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Emma Cobb¹  Peter Donachie¹  Wolf-Peter Schmidt¹  Valerie Curtis¹  Mícheál de Barra¹  Laura Dodrill¹ 

[1] Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK;

关键词: Faecal Coliform;    Hand Hygiene;    Hygiene Practice;    Faecal Indicator Bacterium;    Hygiene Behaviour;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-31

 received in 2009-11-26, accepted in 2011-01-12,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundA previous study found that the prevalence of contamination with bacteria of faecal-origin on the hands of men differed across UK cities, with a general trend of increased contamination in northern cities. The aim of this study was to (1) confirm the north-south trend (2) identify causes for the trend.MethodsHand swabs from commuters (n = 308) at train stations in 4 cities were tested for the presence of faecal bacteria.ResultsThe prevalence of hand contamination with faecal bacteria was again higher in cities in the north compared to the south (5% in London, 4% in Birmingham, 10% in Liverpool and 19% in Newcastle). Contamination risk decreased with age and better personal hygiene (self-reported). Soil contact and shaking hands increased contamination with faecal bacteria. However, in multivariable analysis, none of these factors fully explained the variation in contamination across cities.ConclusionThe study confirmed the north-south differences in faecal contamination of hands without finding a clear cause for the trend. Faecal contamination of hands was associated with personal hygiene indicators suggesting that microbiological testing may contribute to evaluating hygiene promotion campaigns.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Dodrill et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.