Question:

Thank you for your informative blog. In reading over some of the other questions that have been submitted, this may seem like a trivial question, but I’ve had children in Granite School District for five years and still haven’t seen any action being taken.

My question is: What is keeping the district from replacing the pull-down cloth hand towels still being used in elementary schools? I’ve seen over the course of several years that elementary-age students are not able to correctly use the towels, and large groups of children end up drying their hands with visibly dirty portions of the towels. With the Swine Flu scare, chicken pox outbreaks, and everyday childhood illnesses, I’m disappointed that more action hasn’t been taken to provide a more sanitary way for children to wash and dry their hands throughout the day. What can we as parents do to help our schools replace these towels with a cleaner, easier option?

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate all that you do to ensure that our children are well educated and well taken care of during the hours they spend at school.

Response:

There are two parts to this response.

First we need to understand the financial ramifications of such a decision. Currently, there are over 2,300 cloth towel dispensers being used at various locations through our district. There are two options for replacing these dispensers. There is a standard paper towel dispenser that students usually waste vast amounts of the paper towel along with the environmental impact. The battery operated “sensor” dispensers limit waste, but have ongoing costs related to manpower and changing the batteries. There are also air dryers that require the additional expense of running additional electric outlets to our restroom facilities (particularly in our older buildings). New facilities are being designed and constructed with these outlets. We are testing out several types of hand dryers. However, they are cost prohibitive due to the significant upfront expense that hovers around $600-$800 for installation. Overall, whether we switch all of these devices to one of these alternatives, the cost to immediately replace these 2,300 dispensers would cost around $100,000 to over $1.8 million. As you can see, an immediate transition to an alternative is cost intensive.

Secondly, we must consider the actual health ramifications of these cloth dispensers. In working with the health department and in reviewing studies available on the subject, cloth hand towels are far more hygienic than both paper towels and air dryers. While the perception is contrary to these studies, the television news program 20/20 also did a segment and found that people should avoid air dryers because they are blowing bacteria in the air (in the restroom) onto your hands. Because drying removes most of the bacteria, cloth hand towels are the most safe form of drying your hands (I know what you are thinking because we all had the same perception). Additionally, they are completely sanctioned by our local department, the FDA and the federal department of health and human services. There is no evidence that bacteria can travel through the physical barrier in the dispenser from the contaminated portion to the clean portion of the towel and since the cloth is more absorbent than paper and effective than the air blowers, they are more sanitary.

You have a great point when it comes to using the machines correctly. Our schools who utilize these devices should be instructing children on how to use them properly. Additionally, we need help from our students and patrons to let us know when any of our devices are not serviceable so that local janitorial staff can remedy the problem quickly.

Not only are cloth towels superior when it comes to actual hygienic standards, they are far superior as far as cost, safety (think fires), vandalism and environmental impacts. We will continue to have problems with vandalism and other issues with all of our dispensers. After carefully studying this issue in our janitorial department (since we initially received complaints back in 2010 during the H1N1 scare), it has been decided to continue to utilize cloth dispensers until there is good rationale to change.

Thanks for your question and for all the research and efforts made by our janitorial staff. If you would like to review some of the independent studies that have been conducted on this topic, a folder with the information is available in the Communications Department.