Sexist lavatories given an unclean bill of health

TOP OF the list of 10 things you probably did not know about public conveniences is that lavatory legislation is sexist, writes Celia Hall.

Another remarkable fact is that far from being more hygienic, those irritating hot-air driers increase the germ count on the hands, according to research published yesterday.

While Jon Owen Jones, MP for Cardiff Central, campaigns for a better deal for anyone caught short in the high street, researchers at Westminster University have been lurking in lavatories across the country.

It is Mr Owen Jones who wants the law changed to require local authorities to provide lavatories and to remove the 'ridiculous anomaly' that allows them to charge women for urinating, but not men.

If he should get his way and have public lavatories enshrined in the Citizen's Charter, he will no doubt welcome the results of the research.

Brian Knights, director of the university's Division of Environmental Science, said at the launch of his report yesterday, that the driers encouraged the growth of bacteria, harboured bacteria in their nozzles and spread it about.

For this arcane piece of research students encouraged lavatory users in a variety of settings - factories, schools, Underground stations - to press their fingers into a dish of laboratory jelly both between the lavatory and the wash basins and again after they had washed and dried their hands. Both specimens were then cultured overnight and germ counts were taken.

They found that after hot air drying bacteria counts were up 504 per cent; after drying with cloth roller towel they were down by 10 per cent and after drying with a paper towel they were down 42 per cent.

The researchers, who did the work on behalf of the Association of Soft Tissue Manufacturers, also found that 40 per cent who used driers tried to dry their hands further on clothes, hair or handkerchieves.