Surveying toilets is valid social and academic exercise. People can say, dude, wash your hands, in as many clever, hilarious and gross ways, but proper handwashing requires proper access to proper tools.

Five, fourth-year University of Otago pharmacy students in Dunedin, New Zealand, visited 92 publicly available toilets, 43 of them in cafes, in their research into the adequacy of handwashing facilities in the community setting.

More than 90 per cent of the cafes had available taps, soap and means of drying hands, but while the 25 public toilets surveyed all had taps, only 17 had soap and drying facilities.

The 24 toilets in other locations, such as shopping areas, met all these requirements.

The water provided in the public toilets was cold in most instances, although 4 per cent of these surveyed had no water.

Microbiologically, water temperature doesn’t matter, but the students pointed out that the colder the water the more likely it was to reduce the frequency and time spent on washing hands.

Public toilets scored the worst on the provision of hand-drying mechanisms, with almost a third having nothing, compared with the overall result of 12 per cent in this category.

Council environmental health team leader Ros MacGill confirmed that the council inspectors did not normally check customer toilets as their brief was to look at the hygiene practices of food-handlers.