How nasty is it not to wipe your ass after going to the bathroom?
The universal question for when the paper ends.
You're in that festival that closes entire streets for a whole day every June. The sun is shining, a reggae band has just wrapped the crowd in a gentle rhythm and just come back from the beer stall hugging some plastic cups full of cheap chela. It seems that nothing could go wrong at this time. Then you feel a cramping in your intestines.
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That combination of steak tacos, French fries with sauce and the latte that you mixed for lunch three hours ago wants to go out. You endure a long wait of four minutes in the fiberglass cubicles. As soon as the plastic door is closed, you drop sitting and unloading. You enjoy the moment, a fleeting relief, but then you notice that the roll of toilet paper is empty. Oh, shit ... literal.
With no other option, you pick up your pants and go with your friends, knowing in your ashamed heart that you did not carry out a basic element of the toilet training protocol that you learned at age four. Here is the problem that you can-or can not-face.
How bad is it not to cleanse?
One gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacterial forms, one thousand parasitic cysts and one hundred eggs with worms, according to the Department of Social and Economic Affairs of the United Nations. So now you are walking with all those possible threats, separated from the rest of the world by a layer of denim and one more of thin drawers.
The fecal matter in your clothes and body can, sometimes unnoticed, spread particles to the hands and then to your environment and even to the body, since the transfer of germs from hand to mouth is common through simple acts such as eating and drink.
"In terms of hygiene, it's absolutely unacceptable" not to clean, says Aaron Glatt, president of medicine at South Nassau Communities Hospital and spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of the United States. "Find something to clean yourself," he says pleadingly. "Use water or tree leaves, do everything possible."
The situation may get worse depending on the type of poop in question, adds Philip M. Tierno, professor of microbiology and pathology at the School of Medicine at the University of New York. "If you have loose stool, it can spread more," says Tierno. Naturally, such feces seep into your clothes and break that barrier out of your pants more easily.
The risk is greater for women. A dirty anus is positioned dangerously close to the vagina, creating an entrance to the bacteria in the urethra, leading to possible infection of the urinary tract. This is one of the reasons why Tierno recommends that people, especially women, go to better places, well restocked, that carry at least one package of disposable tissues and alcohol-based disinfectant. In other words, plan ahead if you go to a festival, a remote natural area or a rest area on the highway.
What do the feces transmit?
Because feces are body wastes, all infectious diseases and bacteria that one carries are manufactured at the time of their expulsion. E. coli, enterococci, diarrheal parasites and other germs whose effects range from simple discomfort to death are spread through excrement. Norovirus, the main cause of diseases and outbreaks of contaminated food in the United States, is an intestinal parasite.
It can be comforting to know that if you have access to a hole that you can squat on and a shower in the near future, you are-in global terms-lucky.
In her book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters (2008), journalist Rose George cites UN statistics that indicate that 2.6 million people lack access to sanitation services. "I do not mean they do not have a bathroom in their house and they have to use a public one ... or that they have a latrine or a ramshackle hut that leads to a dirty drain or pigsty," he writes. George means that "four out of ten people do not have access to any latrine, toilet, bucket or box". Nothing. Instead, they defecate on the train tracks and in the woods. They do it in plastic bags and throw them in narrow alleys. "
The public health problems associated with the lack of disinfection and waste disposal can be surprising. Poor sanitation, poor hygiene and water pollution mostly from fecal sources cause one out of every ten diseases in the world, according to World Health Organization researchers that George cites.
The poop can pose serious risks, but in areas with more advanced sewerage and sanitation systems, our immune system is fighting a continuous battle against a (comparatively) low-level germ flood propagated by fecal particles and our immune system usually wins.
So you're right if you're alarmed by an emergency because of toilet paper, but in terms of everyday life - where our society and bodies fight against fecal particles and the germs they propagate - it's a small but unpleasant risk factor, Tierno says.
How widespread are the fecal particles?
"We, as a society, are immersed in feces," says Tierno. "People wash their hands incorrectly, even when they have access to a bathroom they spread those particles to other areas of the body."
It is not difficult to google some articles where it says that the faecal footprints are common in elements like yoga mats, coffee cups, kitchen faucets. As I read once in an old book, everyone shits. And that creates different levels of bacterial population in societies and individuals, which in turn have different levels of success in combating them.
This means that a few hours walking without cleaning is only at a more uncomfortable level than withstanding the invisible fecal load on your hands and surfaces every day.
"Of course it causes irritation for that person," says Tierno. However, as a nuisance to health, it is "small," he says. Your body is already fighting and usually wins the battle against the germs and microorganisms that accompany the usual faecal contamination of a relatively well disinfected area in a developed world. Although a bit of hanging from your ass without cleaning intensifies that fight, it is likely that you can also win that fight.
You have even less chance of developing E. coli or norovirus from the spread of fecal matter in a large public event, because "sick people stay at home," says Tierno.
If you can not get cleaned up because you're at a music festival or the beach maintenance crew, it's lazy to work, or if you're hiking and you need to get free, it's bad. Faeces are an important carrier of diseases and our repulsion towards them is justified. This is the reason why handkerchiefs and disinfectant are excellent additions to any bag, waistband, backpack or pocket that you have.
But in a world where faecal footprints continue to circulate like spam in environmental particles, an hour or so without cleaning up may not be a problem. Just go to your nearest friend's house or go to the bathroom to a public place as soon as you can for a proper cleaning of your private regions.