Sneeze into Your Sleeve
By Alastair Alexander
Just as new guidelines come in suggesting that all medical staff should wear short sleeves to combat the spread of infection, so someone else points out that sleeves can help stop germs jumping from person to person. It turns out your mother was wrong - using your sleeve to sneeze in may actually be a good thing.But before outraged mothers and nannies march in protest, some context. John Oxford of the Queen Mary medical school in London has suggested that if a person sneezes into their sleeve or the crook of their elbow, they can limit the spread of infection. How does this work? Simply enough - by not sneezing into your hands, you lower the risk of infection by touch.
As everyone knows, frequent and effective handwashing is a cornerstone of effective disease management. Professor Oxford recommends singing 'Happy Birthday' twice whilst using soap and hot water to wash your hands. My dad would add 'tops, bottoms, sides and thumbs' to that. But both would agree that a quick splash under the cold tap isn't going to do much.
Not altogether surprisingly, used handkerchiefs have come under fire, as breeding grounds for bacteria. Oxford recommends using disposable tissues instead, meaning you're not re-soiling your hands with whatever's lurking on the hanky in your pocket. Keeping a handkerchief clean is nothing new of course; the British public information film 'Don't Spread Germs' recommended disinfecting soiled hankies to prevent spreading germs. That was in 1948, so these messages can take a little while to get across."The new etiquette should be to cough and sneeze into your elbow," says Professor Oxford. I'll still heed my mother's advice that my elbow is the only safe thing to put in my ear, but I'll also add that it's the safest place to sneeze.
Other places to sneeze:
- Dozy dogs - On your sleeping pets
- Beer science - Into your pint
- Far flung destinations - In space, where no one can hear you sneeze
- Eh? - Into your solid coffee
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