As part of Bradley Company’s 15th annual “Healthy Handwashing Survey™, 1,012 high school students, ages 14-18, from across the country were asked about the condition of their school’s restrooms as well as their attitudes and behaviors with regards to maintaining good health.
Conducted in January, 2024, schools generally fared poorly in the survey that included an almost equal number of males and females. Nearly half of those responding described conditions in high school restrooms as average, essentially giving them a “C,” while slightly more than a quarter felt they deserved no better than a “D.”
Students, on the other hand, demonstrated a fairly high level of awareness about the need for healthy habits. Ninety-seven percent felt that sanitizing their hands after using the restroom was important, with 86% claiming to do so on a regular basis. Seventy-two percent also felt doing so with soap and water was more effective at removing germs than hand sanitizer.
In addition, 74% reported avoiding contact with classmates who appeared to be ill, and 75% said they personally made the decision to stay home when they felt sick themselves.
Coping with Conditions
Forty percent of those surveyed said they disliked their school’s restrooms because they typically smelled bad or were dirty, with 53% listing used paper towels left lying on the floor and in sinks as being particularly bothersome.
Some students reported taking steps to avoid germs by using their feet to activate flushing mechanisms or paper towels to open doors and operate faucets. Approximately two-thirds coped by limiting their restroom use to just once or twice a day.
Seventy percent also reported having unpleasant experiences in restrooms involving excessive crowding, clogged or unflushed toilets, and stall doors that wouldn’t latch or close properly. When this happened, 57% said they exited without using the facility with nearly half of them avoiding it altogether in the future.
How Schools Can Improve
Improvements that teenagers felt should be made to high school restrooms were mirrored by the responses from 1,003 American adults, ages 18 and up, who were also studied as part of Bradley Company’s annual Healthy Handwashing Survey.
For example, 56% of all students wanted restrooms to be cleaned and stocked more often, with missing paper towels and soap given as top reasons for why they skipped hand-washing when they did. The majority of adults agreed, adding dirty sinks and non-working faucets as other reasons why they sometimes neglected washing their hands.
Thirty-four percent of the adults also ranked touchless fixtures including flushers, faucets and soap dispensers as second in terms of improvements they’d like to see. Eighty-five percent felt it was important for public facilities to have these, and 70% stated they were more likely to revisit establishments that did.
Teenagers also felt a lack of privacy negatively influenced their use of restroom facilities and wanted gaps between stall panels to be eliminated and taller doors installed. Adults held similar views with 70% saying that the stalls in most public restrooms provided them with “insufficient coverage.”
Where IAPMO Fits In
IAPMO influences bathroom behaviors by facilitating the development of codes and standards for products and plumbing installations. According to IAPMO Manager of Code Development, Enrique Gonzalez, these are “developed using an open consensus process by committees and task groups that report to them.”
Gonzalez points out that committees and task groups can and often do include individuals representing school districts who work in administration or maintenance, for example, and that “input and feedback is solicited from any interested party, including parents, as part of the open consensus process.”
Gonzalez also says that codes like the UPC establish “minimum provisions for ensuring public health and safety,” while standards such as IAPMO Guide Criteria (IGC) provide the opportunity to accelerate the development and time-to-market for innovative new products by providing “consensus industry standards that cover products not yet covered by existing ones.”
Setting Standards for Schools
IAPMO plays and important role in addressing concerns about restroom conditions, Gonzalez concludes, by establishing standards that “provide school districts and other entities of public restroom facilities with greater confidence” in how they equip and maintain them.
IAPMO IGC 127-2022: Combined Hand-Washing System
Providing guidelines that encourage the adoption of today’s touchless technologies, this standard applies to assemblies that integrate automatic, electronically-actuated soap dispensers, faucets and hand air-dryers and provides specifications for their materials, physical characteristics, performance testing and markings.
IAPMO – Z1213.10-2022: Water Closets and Partitions
These standards are used to specify partitions for water closets and urinals with three types of privacy ratings provided. Type A provides maximum security with the bottom edge of doors required to be four inches or less from the floor and the top edge equal to or more than 84 inches above it. Type B minimizes occupant exposure with the bottom edge no more than 16 inches above the floor and the top at least 69 inches above it. Type C provides privacy by requiring urinal partitions to be 16 inches or fewer above the floor at the bottom, no more than 60 inches above the floor on the top, and extending at least 18 inches from the wall.
IAPMO IGC 316-2015: Self-Cleaning Water Closets
This was developed to regulate the performance of water closets with self-cleaning systems that function by releasing liquid chemical cleaning agents at predetermined intervals. This standard provides criteria for ensuring these systems operate efficiently without interfering with the normal flush cycle.
Why It Matters
Poorly maintained restrooms make students think their high school is poorly run, with two-thirds of them saying they’ve deliberately patronized a particular restaurant, store, gas station or other business because they had a favorable impression of its restrooms.
This view is also reflected in the attitudes of adults with more than half of those in Bradley’s Handwashing Survey maintaining they felt unpleasant bathroom conditions were an indication of poor management practices that lowered their opinion of an establishment.
This all underscores why it’s important for high schools and other places with public restrooms to ensure they make the grade by keeping them clean, well-maintained and up-to-date.
ABOUT BRADLEY
For more than 100 years, Bradley has been known as a leader in advanced commercial washrooms and comprehensive emergency safety solutions that make public environments hygienic and safe.
Stephen Webb
Last modified: December 11, 2024