Due to the nature of our work many employees shower at the end of shift. Traditionally we have always had a footbath dosed with a product designed to prevent athletes foot but are now questioning this approach as; - We are exposing people to a chemical (perhaps unneccesarily) - Cost - A lot of people step over it and defeat the point of having it - we have no evidence it actually works as people still attend occ health with fungal infections Has anybody else had experience with use of foot baths that may be able to shed light on this. Do new shower facilities even have them any more?

John I agree with Phil here, the best way is a thorough cleaning regime of your showers. Do you provide towels for them or do they bring their own? Is there a possibility to get plastic flip flops, either encourage your employees to buy them or give them a pair of company branded one as an Occ health / hygiene awareness initiative? http://www.mojopromotion...roducts.co.uk/flip_flops I appreciate that depending on the size of your organisation this might be a ludicrous suggestion. Forgive me if it is! ;-)

Or even laundered....

Forget the foot baths. If they simply step in and out of the foot bath then into the shower the biocide in the footbatch will not have been in contact with the skin prior to being rinsed off for anywhere near long enough to have had any real effect. The actives in these products require a contact time of at least a minute. (For some biocides two minutes!) It is one reason why, with certain very limited exceptions, the anti-microbial skin cleasners so strongly promoted by some manufacturers are of no realo benefit. Chris