Kleenex: Disposable weakness in a Pop-up box

On of my BFFFGS (Best Friends Forever From Grad School) sent me the link to a new product that is supposed to revolutionize the way you dry your hands at home. The Kleenex Disposable Hand Towel is a one use "cottony soft" hand towel, packaged in a decorative cardboard "Pop-Up" box that can either sit on your counter, or be wedged in your towel rack. Kleenex explains the need for a disposable hand towel on the product page,

"People in the U.S. dry their hands on cloth bathroom towels approximately 200 billion times a year. The CDC guidelines for hand washing recommends hand drying with a single-use towel. Families have not had a practical alternative to traditional cloth hand towels in their home bathrooms… until now."

200 billion is a lot of hand drying and that number probably does not take into account the alternative drying methods of "wiping your hands on you pants" or "shaking them dry". Apparently, Kleenex also seems to forget that rolls of paper towels have existed for decades and have proved to be practical, albeit environmentally unfriendly, alternatives to cloth towels on many occasions.

Delving further into the product descriptions you learn that Kleenex is in fact doing the public a great service by providing us with these disposable options. You see, "hands are only as clean as the towel used to dry them". If that cloth towel is not perfectly clean, we might be exposed to the dreaded "germs!" and apparently humans just don't know how to handle those sorts of things. What's funny is that we used to know how to handle lots of germs. Our immune systems were strong because we grew up fighting germs and building a resistance. Now we as a society spend billions of dollars each year to destroy anything we think might make us sick and that is not necessarily a good way to operate.

A few weeks ago I listened to an episode of This American Life on NPR and it was about a man who suffered from horrendous allergies. He was pretty much allergic to everything: grass, tree pollen, cats, dust, etc. and to make things worse, he was a professional landscaper which meant that his days outside were torture. The man spoke of looking like death, with dark circles under his eyes and lethargy on a permanent basis. One day this gent heard something interesting - people in developing countries do not suffer from allergies the way that people living in developed countries do, yet they are exposed to many of the same allergens. What these developing countries do have are parasites - like hookworm. Apparently, these hookworms, which live in your gut, are able to shut off the immune response to them in order to stay living in the host with little issue (it is believed that humans and hookworms evolved together and had a symbiotic relationship for thousands of years). When hookworms shut down the immune response, your body is also unresponsive to allergens, meaning that you still might be allergic, but you won't have the symptoms. This man was so miserable that he went to Senegal and infected himself with hookworm and low and behold, has not had allergy symptoms since. This really isn't as bizarro as it sounds - Treatment of autoimmune disorders with parasites is referred to as "Helminthic Therapy" and it is being researched in the UK for allergy treatment and also Crohns Disease and Celiac Disease. 

Getting back to disposable hand towels, I feel like Kleenex and every other company that makes products meant to shield us from common germs and parasites and bacteria are doing us a great disservice. While improved sanitation practices, such as hand washing with soap, has saved countless lives, the extent to which we now go to destroy all germs and bacteria is actually weakening us. The Hygiene Hypothesis is an idea that lack of childhood exposure to germs sets us up to have weak immune systems and I completely believe it as there is now an entire generation of youth in this country that thinks that hand sanitizer is a necessary as soap, yet they are hacking and wheezing in my office on a weekly basis. The other thing that Kleenex is doing that I find infuriating, is provide us with more things to throw away. This world does not need another paper product created to throw away after one use. I for one will keep facing the germs on my cloth towels if it means that I can see a few more trees and a smaller landfill.