Do you find it difficult to get your child into a good routine and find it a struggle to instil polite behaviour in them? Do you ever wonder whether all the temper tantrums are worth it? Well a new international hygiene study is set to reveal how behavioural traits impact on personal hygiene and highlight how those with good manners are often healthier.

Every parent knows you'd do anything to prevent your child from becoming ill however the study will show that even adults have some questionable hygiene habits and straightforward good manners and routine could be the answer to preventing the spread of infection.

But how do you go about making sure children are equipped for later life? At what point can you stop them from rubbing runny noses over their face and coughing without covering their mouths? According to the Hygiene Council, one single bacterium can become more than 8 million bacteria in less than a day; it’s well worth making the effort therefore in ensuring your children are as protected as they possibly can be. Taking simple steps like implementing a morning routine and making sure that children have plenty of sleep does wonders for behaviour too.

Joining us live for a webTV show are Chairman of the Hygiene Council, Professor John Oxford join us to find out why behaviour plays such an important part in health and how you can help your children form good hygiene practice

Professor John Oxford joins us live online at www.studiotalk.tv on Tuesday 7th June at 1:30pm to discuss child behaviour and hygiene.

For more information visit: http://www.facebook.com/missionforhealth

H: Liz Speight

A: Professor John Oxford – Chair, Hygiene Council

H: Hello and welcome to Parent Talk, I’m Liz Speight. Now, a third of those surveyed for the Hygiene Behavioral Study, commissioned by Dettol, admitted that they don’t always wash their hands with soap after using the toilet. Furthermore, almost half of those questioned don’t always wash their hands before eating or preparing food. Joining me to discuss this and more is Professor John Oxford who is Chair of the Hygiene Council. John, welcome along, really nice to see you today. I have washed my hands before you came, I was very aware! Coming up, we talk about the hidden dangers lurking around your home. We look at how you can get your children into a healthy routine, and prevent the spread of disease and infection and all your questions will be answered here live. Don’t forget this is a live show, so if you have any questions or comments for John, please use the box on your screen, click send and we’ll do our best to tackle them over the course of the next 15 minutes or so. And if you’re tweeting whilst watching the show, you can get involved with the conversation @hygienecouncil. OK, John, let’s talk a little bit about our homes. We always try – or at least I know I do – to keep it clean and tidy, but it’s not always easy. We’re so busy, aren’t we?

A: It’s not easy. I think it would be very difficult to make a house germ free. The essence of it in our study, the Dettol Habits study, we tried the house into the picture, we tried to bring the housewife and the househusband and the children into the picture and we found from that study, which is an important study, a huge study, the biggest one that’s ever been done on attitudes, behaviour, we are finding some important things. We’re getting some idea. They’re usually a woman, not a man, we’re finding women are much more hygienic in all sorts of ways, than men

H: That doesn’t surprise me, I have to say!

A: It’s a tidy woman, it’s a woman with manners and usually with a couple of children and with a house to run. And that person is thinking about themselves and they’re thinking about their family and they’re thinking about everyone else at the same time. Rather perfect

H: So we’re all trying to be that perfect person. But it’s not always easy, is it? We’re so busy and I suppose we shouldn’t really blame ourselves when we get these bugs, but what sort of dangerous bacterium are there, lurking in your house that could pose a serious risk to you and your family? It is a serious issue this, isn’t it? It’s not just about dust, is it?

A: No, it is serious because I think most people think that you don’t catch anything in your own home. The home is a safe, wonderful place, but you do catching things there and in a sense the culprits are the most wonderful creatures in the home, that is the children

H: Yes! Little darlings and their germs!

A: Yes, because they don’t have the concept of social distancing, do they? They get close in. Really their hygiene level is quite poor, they’re always kissing each other and hugging each other

H: Picking their noses and all those sorts of things!

A: That’s right. So any infection, like the swine flu or diarrhea and vomiting, or Hepatitis A, any infection that starts going round with them, they’ll bring it home and tend to give to their siblings, and then the infection moves on to their parents and then perhaps the grandparents, so that’s the way. In any instance, the home unfortunately is not free of problems. And if you dissect it open which we do on the Hygiene Council, you’ve got the bedrooms and the hallway and all of this, the culprit usually is round the kitchen

H: OK, so that’s one of the main hotspots, the kitchen. So explain how that works then.

A: Well, the kitchen is kind of an avenue, it’s like a motorway because you’re bring stuff in. The children are there anyway, the dogs and cats, who are also a possibility of bringing things in and out, they’re also in the kitchen because they get fed there, the kitchen sink is usually a pretty hot spot. For several reasons. One is that you’re bringing in vegetables and lettuces and things. They’ve been cultivated in gardens or allotments with manure, manure is often used. So you get bacteria on them coming in. You get chickens, most chickens have fecal bacterium on them. They get opened up in the sink

H: This is making me feel quite ill actually!

A: Well then you’ve got the little children themselves. Who have been to the toilet upstairs, they didn’t wash their hands and then they come down and smear it around the sink. And then, there’s a tendency for the househusband or the housewife to use a little sponge thing, and kind of smear it round, and then that sponge is used in the rest of the kitchen. So any bacterium in the sink is quickly transported, like on superhighway to the rest of the kitchen. And that’s the essence of it

H: Yuck! It’s not just the kitchen though, is it? We’ve got the kitchen bin to worry about as well

A: Yes, yes. You’ve got the toilet to worry about in one sense, but on the other hand, what tends to happen is most effort – in a household most effort is put into disinfecting the toilet. Everyone concentrates their efforts on the toilet. As a result you could eat your breakfast off the toilet in most households and get away with it. And in the kitchen, you wouldn’t want to eat your breakfast in the sink, you see?

H: That’s really interesting. So we need a bit of disinfectant round the sink then to keep that clear. And what about, say a child sneezes and then they go and reach for the remote control and then they switch the light switch off. Can germs live on them? Is that a myth?

A: Oh no, they can certainly live on them. They kind of survive, say with swine flu, that’s why there was the whole government campaign to say if you’re going to cough, cough into your elbow, because if you cough into hand and someone else holds your hand, then they get the infection. If they touch their nose, then they’ve got themselves infected. But no one – no one I know anyway – grabs you by the elbow. So they do survive. An influenza or a swine flu will last maybe 24 hours on a little button, and things like bacteria like e-coli, they’ll last for 5, 6, 7 hours on a piece of wood, on a surface, so they will survive. They’re slowly decaying but they will survive

H: Yuck! What do we actually do about this? Is it just a case of regular cleaning?

A: Yes, it is really. It’s definitely not bucket chemistry, we’re not saying anything to the Hygiene Council, we’re not saying anything about using large quantities of disinfectants or anything like that. What we’re saying is identify the hotspots, which will be the very things which we talked about, the sink, the handles, doorknobs. Maybe the television, that sort of thing. The pushchair handle. Important little things like that. And then you spray, you use a bit of disinfectant, which does kill, is formulated for things like that, like the Dettol range, it’s not the only range, but it’s a range. They do kill viruses and bacteria on contact, so you target the areas where you know where they are. It’s a bit of a waste of time doing the floor, put it on things that you’re going to touch

H: Or a wipe or something might be easier

A: Yes, because anything you touch with your hands will in the end get to your eye, because we’re always rubbing our eyes, or get to our mouths or get to our noses.

H: Because if you’ve got a spray, the germs could be on the cloth and then you’re putting it on the cloth. We’ve had a question in from Richard Carver, a little bit about that actually. He says; “What’s worse for germs? A dirty dishcloth, a bin, or a dirty toilet?” That’s a bit of an open-ended question, they all sound pretty hideous to me!

A: Yes. The answer is it depends. It depends on…

H: How dirty.

A: Yes, how dirty. And whether the toilet…I mean, the toilet would be the first choice if it’s not been cleaned out, for obvious reasons, but on the other hand if people have really gone to town on the toilet, which is normally the case, I would put the toilet fairly low down on the sequence, so it depends

H: And how often should you be replacing your kitchen sponges and your cloths? And should you replace, should you disinfect, what’s the best plan?

A: The kitchen cloth, the little sponge is notorious, absolutely notorious. And over the last 2 or 3 years, going around the world we’ve done surveys where we actually go into people’s homes…

H: And terrify them!

A: …and take a little swab, like a wooden thing with a cotton on the end of it, and do a little area like on the settee. Do a little area, plonk it in a tube and send it back to London and cool it. And in London they place it out on a bacteriological plate, and they then write the results, how many bacteria were there. And so we kind of know our route. And quite a lot of bacteria are around, I can tell you. Quite a lot. Too many

H: So dishcloths and sponges then. Once a week or do you put them in the microwave to disinfect them, or what’s the plan?

A: A good place is put them in the dishwasher, if you’ve got a dishwasher. In actual fact, if everyone could afford a dishwasher, that’s very good thing to have in the kitchen, because it gets the dishes up to quite a high temperature. Much higher than you’d ever use hand washing. I know that because I wash up

H: You know that when you open it, because steam comes out

A: Yes. And pretty powerful chemicals in a dishwasher. So you can pretty much guarantee that anything coming out of the dishwasher will be free of any known virus of bacteria. It’s a very good piece of kit to have

H: OK. So maybe put your dishcloths in there

A: Yes, put your sponge in there

H: Once a week, or every day, or…?

A: I would tend to put it in every day

H: Every day. It doesn’t do any harm, does it?

A: It doesn’t do any harm, it makes it all nice and fresh and it destroys the superhighway of bacteria in your kitchen

H: So we’ve talked a little bit – quite a lot – about the home, but what about when you’re out and about? How do you protect your family when you’re out and about, because there are those gel/hand-wash things aren’t there?

A: Yes. In the flu pandemic, if you noticed that government campaign, I think it was really good actually. Everywhere I went in London there were the pictures, Kill It, Bin It…all this, and these little bottles you carry around, with the alcohol or whatever, they’re very effective. They do kill, very quickly, so it’s nothing like it. And we were talking earlier on, where am I going on Sunday? I’m going to South Africa, be on British Airways for 10 hours. On those planes, you can clear yourself up a little bit, so they’re very good for travelers

H: And they’re useful to have in your handbag, because you just never know. Especially when you’ve got kids, quite where you’re going to end up with kids

A: Or you keep one in your pocket. I was in India last year and I can tell you India has more problems than many countries. The water supply is not guaranteed, so you can’t wash things in the water because the water itself might be contaminated. So it’s thinking about it before hand, where you’re going

H: Just be a bit prepared

A: It doesn’t do you any harm at all to bring a little thing along and use it

H: You’ll be grateful for that, rather than spending your holiday sitting on the loo! Some people I know are a little bit obsessed with a cleaning and I often think that maybe you’re making things worse. Can we give our children allergies or asthma by over-cleaning and eradicating the bugs so they don’t get immune to them?

A: No, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I know there’s been this correlation. There is more asthma around, more allergies around, but is that to do with they’re getting clean? I don’t think it is. There are many other things that have been changing at the same time. Pollution’s been increasing, motor cars all of that sort of thing. I would suspect that most of that has a much more direct effect than dirt. In fact, I would put it another way, what we don’t want to is go back to Victorian times when dirt was a big killer. Dirt is not harmless, it has all kinds of horrible things in it. Horrible bacteria and maybe horrible viruses. So you don’t want it, you really don’t want it. So I would never accept the idea that dirt is good for you. I just wouldn’t.

H: No.

A: And I had it put to me recently, I was at a meeting in Vienna a couple of weeks ago and speaker after speaker reminded me that in a typical adult, like us two, we carry around 2 ½k of bacteria in our gut and if you…our gut if you lay it out is the size of a tennis court. Inside of us we’ve got the size of a tennis court and 2 ½k of bacteria. 6,000 species. Now why on earth will all that inside us…

H: Because they’re friendly bacteria! Is that the difference?

A: Well, they’re usually friendly bacteria, but under circumstances they could turn a bit nasty. But with all that carrying around with us, why do we want any extras? And then also, with the targeted disinfection, we’re not targeting that 2 ½k inside us, what we’re saying is we’re after one or two horrible ones – salmonellas, e-coli. There are some that are the horrible ones and we will target and we will kill them like using an Exocet missile. We’ll fire it off and boosh!

H: It’s gone. Keep them under control in your house, but how do you get your kids into a routine of keeping themselves clean, and how do you hammer it home to them that yes, you must wash your hands after you go to the loo, before meals, after touching pets, etc?

A: It’s usually the woman that does it. The woman is the guardian of health in the family, for the husband and the children, whatever. She’s the woman, she has that responsibility and she’s very good at it.

H: Nagging!

A: No, I don’t necessarily think it’s nagging, but they’re good at it, they’ve got the patience that men sometimes haven’t got. But I think children are the essence of it and when I go to South Africa at the weekend, I will see some children in Soweto or in the schools, and we will see them and we’ll entertain them, and we’ll educate them about hygiene. Now, if they can get the habit of the hand washing - simple stuff hand washing, it’s got to be done properly, you can’t just half do it, you’ve got to do the job properly – if we can get the job done, get it into them, they will do it as a habit

H: And studies have shown this, haven’t they? You start them young…tell us a little bit about that

A: Well, it’s like you and me and driving. We wouldn’t dream of driving without a safety belt on, just click, bang, forget about it. So that’s we want with these children. Recently I was at a school and the headmistress said, I don’t know why they’re eating four times a day, well they were. She said, they had their meals and they all then go and brush their teeth, automatically. I said to her, why don’t they wash their hands before the meal. Oh no!

H: Because it just wasn’t in their routine

A: No.

H: So talking about hand washing, how often should we be washing our hands? We don’t want to be obsessed with it do we, but when should we washing our hands in the day?

A: It’s a bit difficult to get the numbers. And in this survey, we’ve just done, the Dettol Habits study, where we went around the world, 12 countries in the world, 1,000 people in each country, asked them 120 questions each, a big study, we settled on about 6. We asked people as a kind of a norm, about 6 times a day. Using soap. So we asked them, how many times do you wash your hands using soap? So if they said 6 or over, we put them in to fairly good hygiene, but a lot of them, a least half of them didn’t even do that. So I don’t know what the most dreadful scenario was, probably none a day. So you’re into fairly disastrous areas with some of this stuff, you really are. Sometimes you’d rather not go there. But I think we have to go there

H: It is all serious stuff. We’re very light hearted but it is serious, you’re talking from death with some of these germs aren’t you?

A: Yes you can! Oh my goodness! We see it all the time, some germ or other, somewhere, and a mistake can always be, oh well, it’s there and I’m here, that’s a serious mistake saying that, because one minute you’re there and the next minute you’re here

H: OK. Well it’s all interesting stuff and we’re going to be taking all of your questions here live, coming up next. Stay with us

Break

H: Hello, we’re talking today about how to keep your family clean and germ free, how to have a good hygiene habit in your household really. We’ve had quite a few of your questions in about this subject, so let’s put some of those to the Professor here. Emily sent in a question, she said; “With the summer here, are bed beds likely to breed lots?” You hear a lot about bed bugs. It’s making me itch already!

A: Yes. I suspect they might. If you go to New York – I do spend a lot of my time moving round with this study…

H: Chasing bugs!

A: Yes! It is a problem. It’s a growing problem. I don’t understand why

H: Maybe it’s because people are travelling more perhaps? Bringing these things back with them?

A: It could be. It could be that there’s less people getting worried about disinfectants and sprays. So maybe 10 years ago, we’d say right, go and get this powerful insecticide, kill them all off, there’s a slight tendency to say oh we don’t need chemicals in the bedroom. There’s a slight touch of that. My answer to that is, I think I wouldn’t tolerate them. I would want to get some chemistry going ASAP

H: And are the bugs getting more resistant to the chemicals though?

A: They probably are. Certainly mosquitoes are to chemicals and you would like to destroy them because of malaria. They’re very adaptable, and of course bacterial viruses are even more adaptable, so they’re never going to stay static while you go at them, so you’re going to have change your formulation because they’re going to be immune to it. And it’s going to be a continuing battle

H: They’re so clever, aren’t they, those little blighters!

A: Yes, they’re instinctive. They’re Darwinian

H: OK. Another question from Maria; “Just how often should one defrost the freezer and deep clean the fridge?”

A: Again, it’s a bit of a tricky one, it depends what you’re keeping in it

H: Yes, and how often you’re using it and how big your family is

A: I was recently went fishing and caught some fish. Well, of course they’re a bit smelly and a bit awkward, fish, and you can never get them in and out the freezer without them dripping something so it’ll soon start smelling if you’re not careful. A bit of a difficult question. I would say the deep freezer, maybe once a month, but it will depend on the circumstances. The fridge is a absorber of these bacteria

H: Even though it’s cold?

A: Yes, they just survive. You can keep them going. I mean if I wanted to keep a little plate of bacteria – if I’d grown some e-coli for example – and I wanted to keep it, I’d put it in the fridge, and a year later it would still be there

H: So it just slows them all down?

A: Yes, it slows down, they become static, and then you can warm them up and off they go. So a fridge is definitely a potential source. The fridge door, if you’ve contaminated your hands the fridge door. Inside the fridge we know, you can pick up moulds, often we pick up moulds and quite a lot of bacteria. Not only e-coli, but staphylococcus aureus, we pick up in the fridge

H: And that will give you…?

A: Boils. And the worst situation with the staphylococcus is that you get these MRSA’s. So they’re out there. No one should imagine that these bugs are restricted to hospitals. They’re in the community

H: It’s giving me heeby-jeebys! Another question in from Owen; “Is it true that biting your fingernails is worse for you than licking a toilet seat?” Well, I can’t say that I’ve ever licked a toilet seat but I do occasionally bite my fingernails, so are you going to tell me that’s worse than licking my toilet seat?

A: Well, most toilet seats I think are pretty clean, because of all the effort that people put into cleaning the toilet area, so if I was given the choice between licking someone’s toilet seat or chewing their fingernails, I think I’d go for the toilet seat!

H: Someone else’s fingernails!

A: Yes! I think I’d go for the toilet seat!

H: I think neither is advisable really!

A: No, you don’t want to spread your time doing either of them particularly!

H: OK, Owen, well I hope that’s helpful. Another question in from Fee Star Stone from Childcare is Fun, so she’ll know all about kids and germs, she says; “I’ve 2 under 2”, she’s got a20 month old and an 8 month old; “I’m always cleaning and ensuring I wash my hands. Everyone jokes about how obsessively clean my house is, however, we always seem to get tummy bugs or colds. What am I missing? Am I cleaning too much?”

A: No, I would say that’s never the case. I could not imagine anyone cleaning too much. Why you’re getting…well, children do, that’s the only thing. You can’t keep them locked in the house. Immediately they’re out and about and in contact with other children, whatever you’re doing in the house, you’re not going to be control of them when they’re kissing other children, or touching other children. So they’ll get infected, come back and then you’ve got a real problem. But what you can do with the hygiene, very much so, is stop the bug or the virus moving to you. You can break that chain, which is quite important because you don’t want to end up with the same things that you’re children have got all the time.

H: So how do you go about that then?

A: Well, basically it’s quite simple. You recognise that your hands are a major way of transferring infection from a child to yourself. Because you’re holding them, you’re touching them, you’re opening up their mouths and putting your finger in, you’re washing them, and generally getting into them and then your hands are contaminated. So what you’ve got to do is really thoroughly wash your hands. While singing Happy Birthday to Me twice!

H: OK, so make sure you do it properly. Under your fingernails and what have you

A: Yes, everywhere

H: And then disinfect your door handles and all that, until that bug’s gone hopefully

A: This is not a daily thing which will take hours and hours and hours, the whole thing can be done in 10, 15 minutes, but I suspect – I know – it’s 10 minutes well placed

H: OK. Well it’s all interesting stuff isn’t it? You’ve terrified me now, I’m going to go home and completely disinfect my house!

A: I should do the same!

H: We’ve just got a puppy dog as well, so goodness knows what she’s up to! Professor John Oxford, thanks very much for coming in and talking to us about it. Unfortunately we have run out of time, but if you want to get involved in the conversation, go to the twitter @hygienecouncil or you can visit the website which is hygienecouncil.com, and it isn’t difficult stuff, is it? We’ve just got to get into the habit of keeping clean and it will do you and your family good. Well thanks very much for watching and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye

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