Something to contemplate under the Christmas mistletoe:
We could be more at risk of picking up illnesses from shaking hands than from kissing says a press release from experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. See their studies in British Medical Journal and American Journal of Infection Control on hand hygiene.
Certainly hands are well known for transmitting diseases, and a major headache for infection control teams in hospitals is getting doctors and nurses to wash or otherwise clean their hands between patients. Faces are generally cleaner and come into contact with fewer contaminated surfaces than hands so it could make sense.
So try it….
See search of CAB Abstracts on Google on hands and disease transmission. Oddly ‘kissing’ isn’t a good search term as there is a lot in CAB Abstracts about the ‘kissing bug’ the vector of Chagas’ disease. Or look at Global Health.
