Exposure to harmful bacteria, viruses or other biologically or chemically hazardous materials is the way in which people become sick. While we are all exposed on a daily basis to diseases and materials which could kill us, our awareness of such things is minute, and we all tend to fight off infection reasonably well, well enough that a simple trip to the restroom typically does not result in an acute infection. For some individuals, though, exposure to dangerous contaminants can be a life-threatening proposition, and efforts to limit or eliminate exposure to pathogens or other harmful materials can become a major plank in their health and fitness regimens. For people with compromised immune systems such as the elderly, the very young, or for patients suffering from an auto-immune deficiency, reducing exposure to toxins can be a life or death matter. For the rest of us, including some who, like myself, are more than a little paranoid about and disgusted with the idea of touching dirty things, contracting a disease, and having to tell friends and family that my illness is the result of a filthy public restroom, automated devices are having an enormous effect upon our frequency and intensity of exposure to harmful contaminants. One such device making a huge difference in my life is the new automatic towel dispensers which are become more and more commonplace in public and private restrooms, doctor's offices, hospitals, health care clinics, schools and many more locations.
For as long as I can remember, getting a paper towel from a public restroom meant coming into prolonged and intimate contact with a device which, upon consideration, had been groped and abused by thousands and thousands of other adult males. As an adult male, I am very well aware that many of my brothers do not share my penchant for cleanliness, health, fitness and hygiene, and to this end, they do not wash their hands with any degree of frequency or effectiveness when visiting public or private restrooms. In fact, pants, shirts or other articles of clothing typically serve as a dry towel to solve any hygiene or contamination and exposure issues with which the average adult male is faced. Knowing this, as well as having taken far too many courses in microbiology in college, I am painfully aware of the potential exposure risks inherent to any public restroom. In short, people are dirty, and touching the things that they have touched will dirty me as well. Then, I discovered that the old manual paper towel machines were being slowly replaced by automatic towel dispensers, and the world become slightly cleaner.
Rather than cranking the lever of the old manual bathroom one-armed bandit repeatedly, vainly struggling to procure enough paper towels to dry my trembling hands while pushing the images of germs and viruses crawling slowly, inexorably towards some opening in my epidermal layer, a simple wave today produces all of the paper towels I need to finish the job and escape quickly. The automatic towel dispensers make my visits to public restrooms a little less stressful.
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