h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but when I had the Star, I ended up buying antibacterial soap.

And in a very short space of time my hands were raw, cracked and bleeding.

It is now banned again in our house.

BTW, I did read somewhere (although this is the equivalent of 'a friend of a friend tole me' as I can't remember where) that they had done a comparison study between a group of people who washed every day and were very consciencious generally about clenliness, and about people who washed rarely, and the clean group had had a heck of a lot more colds and such in the time period of the study.

I don't know whether it was habitual clenliness/ dirtiness or just for the period of the study though. I guess that, if it's true at all, would make a difference.

On the other hand, perhaps it's genetic combined with nurture: those of us who wallow in dirt are probably brought up by people who wallow in dirt, and only the hardiest member sof such families have survived. Those hyper cleanly people might be a weaker strain who have only survived by being hyper cleanly.

Interesting topic, anyway. Great article.

Thank you Solnushka and Zvozda.

People like to keep things simple I suppose. Even when we know that in reality, things can be very complicated - and it's easy to get a distorted picture if we fail to take some of the important factors into account. But we can still learn by trial and error, and reach sensible conclusions based on what we know so far. Like trying antibacterial soap and coming to a rational conclusion about it. I use it myself after I've been cleaning up the bird-feeders in my garden (some birds have some truely filthy habits) - ie, no more than once a day. The rest of the time I use ordinary soap. I hope your hands are nice and soft for that little Star now

Good article, for a while I have had similar thoughts about being too clean for our own good and that of the environment because of the unneccassary use of consumer products.

It is no longer acceptable to just wash chopping boards with soap and water, we should use a specially formulated no odour cleaning agent. Funny I don't recall epidemics of food poisoning from chopping boards before special products were produced.

Apparently dishwashers that have successfully disolved the grease off the pots and pans and rinsed them in nearly boiling water leaving them sparkling now need a product to clean themselves. Why are dishwasher different to bowls which just need a wipe with the cloth as you empty the water?

As for personal hygene; we used to survive with a bath once a week and a wipe under the arms with a flannel the rest of the week. Is it because everyone did the same that we did not notice? Or could it be that we are conditioned that if a person does not smell of soap/perfume/deodorant rather than just not smelling then that person must be unhygenic?

Thanks YYUR4Me.

I remember my aunt telling me that when she was a child in the village here, they had to fetch water from a pump in buckets. It would be used more than once. Its final use was to flush the loo at the bottom of the garden. So they didn't wear a clean set of clothes every day. Even knickers were worn for a week between washes. She wondered they didn't all stink. But then she supposed they probably all did stink but no-one noticed because they all stunk the same

As you say, the effect of these things on the environment is something that should concern us.