A survey of some Dunedin community toilets found two cafes with customer toilets which had no means of hand-washing.
The five fourth-year University of Otago pharmacy students who carried out the study and presented their results to fellow students yesterday were not prepared to name the cafes concerned.
Team members had checked out the toilets after lingering over a coffee.
The team visited 92 publicly available toilets, 43 of them in cafes, in their research into the adequacy of hand-washing facilities in the community setting.
They considered water temperature, the availability of functioning taps, types of soap, drying methods, risks of recontamination after hand-washing and whether there were posters or stickers giving information about hand-washing.
More than 90% 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% of these surveyed had no water.
The students pointed out that the colder the water the more likely it was to reduce the frequency and time spent on washing hands.
Almost 80% of the cafes provided warm and cold water.
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% in this category.
The students found 86% of the toilets surveyed did not have posters or stickers outlining hand-washing techniques.
Sometimes information on stickers or posters was not specific enough to reinforce the correct hand-washing procedure.
They noted that the further public toilets were from the city centre, the poorer they were.
They also found discrepancies between the list of public toilets provided by the Dunedin City Council and their availability, with some not where they were supposed to be, or locked.
One of the researchers, Alan Lu, said he did not know how much influence the group's study might have but he hoped the council might update its information and improve maintenance and the provision of soap in some of its toilets.
Another of the students, Rebekah Lee, said recontamination after hand-washing through contact with door handles could be overcome by improved door design, where doors could be pushed with an elbow or shoulder.
Recontamination through door-handle contact featured in 83% of all premises surveyed.
The Dunedin City Council adopted a 10-year plan two years ago to spend several million dollars to add some new toilets and refurbish and replace some old ones.
The agreed standard for hand-washing in these toilets would involve the use of stainless steel fixtures, cold water, taps which turned off automatically, automated hand-driers and liquid-soap dispensers.
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.
However, if anyone had a concern about toilets, staff would follow it up.
