Hand washing

One of the things that surprised me most when I arrived here, was the constant reminder to wash or sanitize your hands. Starts in the galley, where you have hand sanitizer dispenser at the walls so that people can use some of it before they tough cutlery, plates or food. Then there is sanitizer in the computer room to use before you start using a computer there. One of the IT guys who connected my laptop to the internal South Pole station network, shook my hands when we got introduced, and then used hand sanitizer right away with the comment "no offense, but better be careful"...

And then there is of course the bathrooms where you have special soap, instructions on the wall on how to wash your hands properly (1. get water on your hands; 2. get soap on your hands; 3. rub your hands together to disperse soap on all possible hand surfaces - about 10 to 15 seconds; 4. rinse your hands well; 5. dry your hands well), and there is even a anti-bacterial hand lotion.

I started to wonder why the hand hygiene was so incredibly important. And I learned that in such a close community like here on station, germs spread fast, and if one person is sick, it is basically only a matter of time until the whole station is sick. And here on the altitude the station is on, it takes very long for the body to cope with sickness. Everything is just so incredibly exhausting.

So with the hand washing, people try to prevent germs to spread, and therefore keep people in working order. As I mentioned before, the South Pole is not really a holiday destination. People are here to work, and keep things running. So half of the station population being sick would not go so well with this approach...