After all as a parent you get used to dealing with all sorts of messy situations – exploding nappies, misdirected wee, projectile vomiting – that are part and parcel of looking after infants and young children.

Thanks to Latex gloves and disinfectant, it’s amazing how one copes with things that would have once left one gagging.

Still, other day something totally grossed me out.

My husband and I were walking along the street at our local shopping centre when a man standing near us decided to hack up a whole lot of mucous and spit it out.
Not an attractive sight or sound, but we thought little of it until a few minutes later my poor husband realised that the man’s aim had been pretty indiscriminate and that a large glob of yellow-green phlegm had landing on the sleeve of his coat.

I know its winter and phlegm seems to be flying everywhere, but this was totally gross and the habit of spitting in public places struck me as a not-insignificant public health issue.

A bit over a century ago spitting in public places was pretty commonplace.  But around the end of the 19th and early in the 20th century behaviour began to change and spitting was largely gone from public places.

Public health campaigns, especially during the great influenza pandemic after the World War I, told our grandparents and great grandparents the importance of washing hands, holding hands in front of noses or mouths when we sneeze or cough and, yes, not spitting in public places. There was also enforcement with fines for people who had little regard for public hygiene.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, it was extraordinarily rare to see anyone spitting in the street. But over the last few years more and more frequently I see the young, the old, and the in-between hacking up the contents of their throats and projecting them out on to footpaths, walls, the floors and walls of toilets and elevators for all to see, step in, brush against and spread around. What was once a very strong social prohibition, built up over many decades, has been eroded.

A quick survey of ACT laws indicates that while spitting is prohibited on buses and at public swimming pools, it’s pretty much open season anywhere else.

A new effort to reinforce a basic community hygiene standard would be timely. Perhaps some deterrence with on-the-spot fines for creating a nuisance by spitting in public places would help.