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E. coli solution: it’s a wash

Milton Ingram, the general manager of the Wayne Regional Agricultural Fair in Goldsboro, N.C., thought back to his days as a schoolteacher to come up with a creative way to attract children to wash their hands at the fair.

He had his construction workers fashion wash stations that looked like building blocks painted in a rainbow of colors and made them 20 inches high to be at eye-level for kids, says Amusement Business.

He also added signage in noticeable yellow and black, using English and Spanish, and printed with large letters.

The Wayne fair already offered hand-washing stations for patrons before fall 2004. But when 108 cases of E. coli were linked to the North Carolina State Fair, all fairs in the state reassessed signage, traffic patterns and hand-washing stations after the General Assembly passed legislation requiring them to step up preventative measures.

In addition to the handwashing stations, all animal exhibits in North Carolina now must have a 29-inch barrier between animals and visitors. That, in addition to the strategic placement of handwashing stations and signage, eliminating food from animal areas, and coordinating visitors’ traffic patterns so they are directed towards handwashing stations, minimize the ways that visitors can become infected.

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