Irondale High School Global Hand Washing Day

To recognize Global Hand Washing Day on October 15th, students from Irondale High School in Minnesota planned an event to raise awareness about the need to wash hands around the world- including before lunch at Irondale! The following report was submitted to H2O for Life from student Hannah Eschenauer.  You too can let us know what your school is doing!  Send photos and a word document.  We'll feature you on our blogsite.

Irondale High School Global Hand Washing Day Report

For Global Hand Washing Day, Irondale decided to cooperate with the Minnesota Department of Health. Members of the Irondale volunteer club helped with running the hand washing station. The station had a box with a hole on top, a hole on one of the sides, and with two black lights inside the box. The students would get some special lotion that glowed in the black light and spread it all over their hands. This lotion would be their pretend “germs.” After putting on the lotion, they would put their hands through the side hole of the box, look through the top hole of the box, gaze in and see their hands and the pretend “germs” on them. After this, we would ask them to go wash their hands. Next they would come back and see how well they washed their hands. They would put their hands back into the box and see that the parts that were still glowing on their hands are the places that they didn’t wash well enough.

This was done at lunch because first of all, it was the best time during the day and second, the students don’t wash their hands before lunch because they want to get in line right away to get their food. Many of the students were surprised at how there were still germs on their hands after washing with both soap and water. We told them that it wasn’t just soap and water, but it was also the amount of time that they washed that mattered. Most of the time, it was in between the fingers and the nails that still had lotion/germs on it. The Minnesota Department of Health provided free nail scrubbers for the people that tried it. The teachers even tried it and that was fun to watch. The science teachers loved it and thought it was very interesting. In all it went really well because it was an interesting idea and also a fun way to see how well you washed your hands. A lot of people tried it out.

Thanks Hannah and Irondale for sharing your story.  Irondale was entered in the contest drawing to win a free "Flip" video camera- but- they weren't the winners.  Try again during our next contest!