Trailer set to deliver clean hands.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

Public health specialists had the way, and local Rotarians had the will - and the wallet.

Together they created the Rotary Clean Team, a travel trailer dedicated to spreading the word that clean hands prevent disease.

Local Rotary clubs and the Oregon Environmental Health Association teamed up on the trailer, which will set up shop at agricultural fairs this summer - any place that people and animals come in contact with each other.

The 8-by-18-foot wheelchair-accessible trailer is equipped with six sinks, soap and towel dispensers, and black lights. Kids and adults will try out their hand-washing skills by rubbing a glow-in-the-dark lotion on their hands, which shows up under the black light. Then they'll wash their hands and put them under the black light again to see what kind of job they did getting the goo off their hands.

The trailer cost about $7,000, and another $4,000 was spent equipping it as a rolling wash station, said Frank Lambe, the project chairman.

The seeds of the partnership were planted after Bob Anderson, an environmental health specialist with the Marion County Health Department, spoke at an OEHA conference a year ago about the glow-in-the-dark approach to encourage hand-washing.

Ron Baker, a Roseburg Rotarian and a private environmental health consultant, heard Anderson's talk and figured that the hand-washing program would be a perfect fit with Rotary's outreach programs. When he contacted Eugene Rotarians, they took the ball and ran with it, Baker said.

The E. coli outbreak in 2002, in which 82 people fell ill after visiting the Lane County Fair, made it an easy sell, said Dick Briggs, one of the organizers.

"It made it easy for me to convince clubs to put money in it," he said .

The Southtowne, Delta, Springfield and Roseburg clubs were the original sponsors, and additional contributions came from the Eugene Airport, Mid-Valley, Emerald and Coos Bay/North Bend clubs.

The Clean Team trailer already has been booked at seven agricultural and county fairs this summer, including the Lane County Fair.

Fair officials were happy to make space for the trailer, marketing manager Carrie Matsushita said. Last summer's fair, the first after the 2002 outbreak, made a big push to get people to wash their hands by increasing the number of hand-washing stations fivefold.

Anderson, the Marion County health official, said anything that gets people to wash their hands after they've come in contact with animals is a good thing, he said.

"From a pure public health standpoint, we're getting a lot of people washing their hands at the right time," Anderson said.