Authors > Ellen Sandbeck > Author Voices

OUTTAKE #6, Other People's Hands...

Now that our hands are sparkling clean, what about everyone else’s germy mitts? How do we keep our food from being contaminated by germs deposited in public places by the great hordes of the unwashed? There are elevator buttons, ATM machine buttons, door handles, and faucet handles out there, and all of them have been touched by people who have germs on their hands! Perhaps most terrifying of all, there are shopping cart handles out there! Fortunately for the lucky citizens of Arkansas, Fred Allen, freshman legislator from Little Rock, is on the job. While he was campaigning, he heard from so many elderly women who “...mentioned that they didn’t want to go shopping because the shopping carts were nasty,” that he campaigned on a platform that included encouraging grocery stores to offer antimicrobial wipes to customers who use shopping carts. Mr. Allen won election and introduced a bill called the Arkansas Health-Conscious Shopper Program, which was passed into law in 2007. The text of the law states that it is intended to “increase awareness of Arkansas shoppers, infants and young children about potential contamination from contact with a shopping cart handle.” One cannot help wondering how all these elderly ladies got to be elderly in the first place if shopping cart handles are so extremely dangerous. A spokesman at the Centers for Disease Control told a reporter: "We don't link scores of infections to environmental surfaces like shopping carts. Shopping cart germs are not a major problem.” There have always been microbes on our planet, and there always will be. Very few microbes are capable of surviving, much less multiplying, on hard, dry surfaces, and even fewer are capable of jumping out at you from these surfaces. So when you choose a shopping cart, make sure it’s a dry one. If you are worried about the cleanliness of your unfamiliar surroundings, keep your fingers out of your nose, eyes, and mouth, and pick your nose and your teeth in the comfort of your own home. We are fortunate that the everyday germs we encounter as we go about our daily business are not as dangerous as the superbugs that are being created in hospitals. If enough of us keep our wits about us and avoid using antimicrobials, maybe those ordinary microbes will remain ordinary. Despite the panicky reports from the mass media, actual illness is also unlikely to result from contact with a menu from a restaurant chain, even if the menu has-- as was discovered by a television news anchor in South Carolina, who conducted an “undercover operation”--one hundred units of Bacillus cereus on it. The reporter then breathlessly reported that Bacillus cereus, could, if ingested, “...make you sick with diarrhea and vomiting.” Not to be outdone, an action reporter in North Carolina attended the movies, where he and his crew swabbed down some seatbacks and had the samples tested. The report came back positive for bacillus cereus. This is not surprising. Bacillus cereus is ubiquitous on our planet. According to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, “Food poisoning caused by Bacillus cereus may occur when foods are prepared and held without adequate refrigeration for several hours before serving. B. cereus is an aerobic spore forming bacterium that is commonly found in soil, on vegetables, and in many raw and processed foods.” Consumption of foods that contain >106 B. cereus/g (translation: foods that contain more than one million B. cereus bacteria per gram, which is approximately one-fifth of a teaspoon) may result in food poisoning.” Those 100 units of Bacillus cereus--along with 4,999, 901 of their friends and relatives--in a teaspoon of your cooked food, might indeed make you ill. So try to refrain from stirring your oatmeal with your menu if you are planning to wait four hours before eating your breakfast. If you are worried about the cleanliness of your unfamiliar surroundings, keep your fingers out of your nose, eyes, and mouth, and pick your nose and your teeth in the comfort of your own home. We are fortunate that the everyday germs we encounter as we go about our daily business are not as dangerous as the superbugs that are being created in hospitals. If enough of us keep our wits about us and avoid using antimicrobials, maybe those ordinary microbes will remain ordinary.