You Choose Which One?

The fact is all of us at one time of our lives are faced with the ominous reality of using the "PUBLIC TOILET." I know for many of you just seeing the image makes you cringe. As a road warrior I can pretty much tell you within a fifty mile geographic region where the cleanest toilet is within a square mile radius. Funny thing is I never think about the dollar bills that pass through my hand throughout the day.

So the question is "Are We Getting Germs From Sitting on the Seat?"

"No," said Janse. "You're not going to get germs from your backside. You're going to get them from your hands." "Usually, actually the floor is the dirtiest, as you might guess."

* The floor test revealed about 2 million bacteria per square inch. Gerba says
that's about 200 times higher than a sanitary surface.
* Not surprisingly, the sanitary napkin disposal unit also failed the test and
rated as the spot with the most germs in our ladies' room.
* But our sink, an area that is usually a haven for germs, was found to be
unexpectedly clean. The biggest surprise was found on the toilet seat. It was deemed a sanitary surface.

A sanitary surface is something clean enough to eat off of, with no more than 1,000 bacteria per square inch. The toilet seat passed that test, but
a desk failed.

So, what about money? Well, a study at the University of California at San Francisco cultured 113 examples of "real life" cash from a deli, a post office, a newsstand, and so on. Most grew harmless organisms, but 18 percent of coins and 7 percent of notes had some less friendly bacteria on them, including the odd colony of Escherichia coli and the potential pathogen S. aureus.

What will be obvious by now is that anything that gets on hands can get on money. And hands are hardly germ-free. While not the germiest parts of the human body--they're too dry for that--hands have a local population of bacteria quietly grazing on their skin debris. In the late 1930s, the surgeon P. B. Price discovered something rather odd and shocking about our hands: no amount of washing with soap or antimicrobial agents can sterilize them. "Even after 10, 15 washings," says James Leyden, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, "bacteria are there by the thousands."

So, what do you do? Enjoy your life and live it to the fullest, I think washing hands is important, but equally so is realizing that many of the greatest fears in life are in our heads and not on our behind!