Boston:
The next time a man hands you a hot dog after making a run to the restroom and the concession stand at an Atlanta Braves baseball game, be careful: there is a good chance he did not wash his hands, according to a report released Monday by a group that sends spies into public restrooms in the name of science.
Only about two-thirds of the men observed washed their hands after using the restroom at Turner Field -- the lowest rate for any of the locations cited in the observational study and survey on the hand-washing habits of Americans. The study, conducted every few years, was released by the American Society for Microbiology and the American Cleaning Institute at a microbiology conference in Boston.
Some subjects were asked about their washing habits in telephone interviews; others were watched by undercover observers in public restrooms. Some of what the sink spectators witnessed was, well, filthy. Consider: 20 percent of people using the restrooms at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal in New York did not wash their hands.
The researchers, from Harris Interactive, stood in restrooms while pretending to fix their hair or put on makeup, said Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for the American Cleaning Institute, a trade group for producers of cleaning products. "After they took care of business, the observer checked whether or not they actually washed their hands," Mr. Sansoni said.
Women tended to be more responsible hand-washers than men -- and female Braves fans were no exception: 98 percent of women observed at Turner Field exercised proper hygiene before exiting the restroom.
The restroom observers reported that 85 percent of men and women observed at public places in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and San Francisco washed their hands after using a public bathroom. (Curiously, in the telephone survey, 96 percent of people said they always washed their hands after using a public bathroom.)
The hand-washing rate dips to 89 percent for those using the facilities at home, according to the phone survey.
People using public restrooms in Chicago and San Francisco were the most frequent hand-washers, according to the observations, with 89 percent of adults washing before exiting.
The overall numbers are the highest reported since the study started in 1996, said Barbara Hyde, a spokeswoman for the American Society for Microbiology. The threat of the H1N1 flu over the past year drove home the importance of hand washing, she said.
"The message is getting out there, and I think people are responding," Ms. Hyde said. "We've lived through a pandemic flu, and that is in part responsible for the change in behavior."
As for sports fans, Mr. Sansoni said, they "might be in a rush to get back to the game." He noted that the percentage of men who soaped up at Turner Field, although the lowest in the report, showed an improvement since the last survey, in 2007.
"But if you're passing people's hot dogs down the aisle, you kind of hope that hand-washing behavior would increase," Mr. Sansoni said.