Cleanliness is Next to …

Given the option, I'll take basic cleanliness over good manners anytime.

You can ignore me, fail to say thank you, be disrespectful, slam the door, give me the finger, curse at me, and even say nasty things about my mother. I really don't care. It goes in one ear and out the other. Sneeze without covering your mouth, or fail to wash your hands after you've been to the washroom, however, and that's another story.

That probably sounds a bit odd. These days, most of us are apparently worried about the world's collective lack of civility, not our lack of personal hygiene. People, we're told, treat each other terribly. We no longer listen, we're thoughtless and foulmouthed, and we behave selfishly. Lynne Truss has devoted an entire book (Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door) to the topic. And, as she points out, this rudeness is as evident on the street as it is at a cocktail party, where no one is ever interested in who you are, just what you do and what you own.

Truss admits that she's not the first to draw attention to this aspect of current society. Numerous books are available that deal with basic courtesy and etiquette. And people have been writing about the topic for at least the last century and a half. My own grandmother was an expert. I can remember riding the bus with her many years ago, and seeing a boy fail to give his seat up to another elderly woman. In her best German, my grandmother promptly provided him with a lesson in basic courtesy. He got up, despite the fact that he probably didn't understand a word she said. That was impressive, and I got the message, too. But personally, I'm more troubled by someone who blows his nose into a tissue and leaves it on the seat beside him, than by ill-bred kids.

Cleanliness and civility are without a doubt related. People who throw cigarettes, coffee cups, or McDonald's wrappers out of their car windows on the freeway are being rude and selfish. The world, they say to the rest of us, is my personal garbage can – and I could give a #@%$?! what you think! But we hardly ever think of this sort of casual dirtying of the streets – or the guy and the abandoned dirty tissue – as a potential danger to public health. I find that surprising.

Most of us already know that if someone with a cold sneezes in our face, we'll likely get sick. We also know that if we kiss a loved one with the flu, we'll soon be bedridden with a fever, muscle aches, a dry cough, and a runny nose. As the CDC reminds us in their handy fact sheet, colds and the flu are spread by "respiratory droplets caused by coughing and sneezing." And people can also become sick by touching something – a seat on a subway or a door in a public washroom – with a cold or flu virus on it, and then touching their mouth or nose. But the CDC also reports something that most of us haven't considered: It's believed that SARS, which caused 774 deaths worldwide between November 2002 and July 2003, is transmitted the same way. And the general consensus in the scientific community is that when the avian flu becomes a pandemic strain (with the potential to kill millions of people), it will also be transmitted from person to person by respiratory droplets.

That hasn't happened, and there's no need to panic … yet. But it's worth noting that the majority of health officials believe that the most effective way to protect yourself during an avian flu pandemic is to look after your personal hygiene. Personal hygiene, in this sense, means washing your hands after you've touched things in public places. It means sneezing into a thick tissue (that won't break) and depositing it in a garbage can. It means not touching your mouth or nose with unclean hands. It means cleaning up after yourself.

I have yet to see a bestseller on personal hygiene and basic cleanliness, a book that will tell me, for example, the proper way to wash my hands. (Is bar soap OK? Should the water be warm or cold? And how long should I scrub?) But there is a real need, and it's a bit more pressing than another lecture on society's lack of civility. Ultimately, that's why I'm more worried about the guy who double dips at a cocktail party, than I am about the bore (and boor!) who's only interested in what I do for a living.

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