You have probably seen the pictures of crowds in Japan where there are some of the people are wearing respirator masks. The reason is not what most of us would guess. Americans tend to wear the masks to protect themselves from getting sick from other people if they have immune issues.
In the Japanese culture. if you have a contagious illness you have a responsibility to wear the mask to protect the well people. Americans are usually not as careful to “keep illness to themselves.”
That having been said, here are the public areas you may not have thought about that could be a source of you getting sick with suggestions to avoid the risk.
Doors Handles on Swinging Doors The button to turn on the hand dryer or the lever to start the paper towel coming out.
The best solution for you is to use an elbow or shoulder to open or start these things when you can.
Keypads. ATMs, Security Access Pads, elevator buttons, and other such places where hundreds of people touch, but are never cleaned can give you a contagious disease. A pencil of stylus are the best solutions to keeping your fingers from delivering the contamination to your body. If you do touch these things, do not touch you face until you have used a hand sanitizer.
Menus Restaurant menus have 100 times more bacteria than a toilet seat, says Charles Gerba, PhD, a microbiologist with the University of Arizona, better known as Dr. Germ. They’re touched by tons, but only wiped down once a day, if that, and usually with a used rag. Instead of washing your hands before you sit down, scrub up after you order. And never lay your silverware on top of the menu.
Drink Garnish Lemons limes, and other cut-up fruit used on the rims of glasses are not usually cleaned before cutting or handled with freshly washed hands. Many germs including E. coli have been found on these when tested. Order your drinks without the garnish to avoid this exposure. The little decoration is not worth the potentially severe stomach and intestinal issues.
Public Water Fountains. Did you ever notice the slime that is usually around the hole the water spouts from? If that doesn’t paint the picture, think how many people have turned that handle. Carry your own water bottle and avoid using these fountains.
Dirty Money The flu virus can live on a dollar bill for 17 days! But no one uses gloves or tissues to handle money. The answer is to wash your hands after you handle money. There is a very good reason that food workers put on plastic gloves to handle food after they touch money. We need to be just as vigilant and was our hands after handling money, especially when we are eating food we will touch such as a sandwich.
Shopping Carts Shopping cart handles can be downright gross. Turns out you’re picking up more than just a loaf of bread. That handle can be swarming with up to 11 million microorganisms, including ones from raw meat. And just think about all the dirty diapers on that seat — the same one you’re putting your produce on. A lot of grocery stores have antibacterial wipes handy, so use them.
Hotel and Cruise Ships Rooms You do not know who was the past person in your room or if they had a contagious illness. Door handles, remotes, the sides of the racks you open to pit your suitcase on, the desk, the light switch, the hair dryer…….and on and on. We purchase large wipes before a trip and take 10 minutes to wipe down the touch points in a hotel room.
Swimming Pools and Hot Tubs A pubic pool can have pounds of poop floating around according to Michele Hlavsa, RN, chief of the CDC’s Healthy Swimming Program. Little kids can carry as much as 10 grams of leftover feces on their rear ends, she says. They don’t make a habit of washing off before jumping in, so all that poop just rinses off into the pool. It adds up, and chlorine doesn’t kill everything. The CDC found that more than half of pools test positive for E. coli, which can cause bloody diarrhea. Your best line of defense? Try not to swallow any water.
If that is not enough, consider the hot tub. They can have additional disease organisms such as Legionella. The action of the jets puts those little contagions into the air where you can inhale them and acquire them. There are also other viruses and bacteria that swim in the water and may not be killed because of a low level of chlorine or other disinfectant.
The bottom line is to be aware of the potential for disease exposure in public. Changing a few habits may keep you healthy. This is particularly important in times of high exposure risk such as flu season or on a cruise where Norovirus has broken out
The Japanese culture believes that If you have a contagious illness, as the sick person you have a responsibility to wear the mask to protect the well people.
Doors handles on swinging doors, the button to turn on the hand dryer or the lever to start the paper towel coming out.The best solution for you is to use an elbow or shoulder to open or start these things when you can.
Drink Garnish Lemons, limes, and other cut-up fruit used on the rims of glasses are not usually cleaned before cutting or handled with freshly washed hands. Many germs including E. coli have been found on these when tested. Order your drinks without the garnish to avoid this exposure. The little decoration is not worth the potentially severe stomach and intestinal issues.
Public Water Fountains.Did you ever notice the slime that is usually around the hole the water spouts from? If that doesn’t paint the picture, think how many people have turned that handle. Carry your own water bottle and avoid using these fountains.
Shopping Carts Shopping cart handles can be downright gross. Turns out you’re picking up more than just a loaf of bread. That handle can be swarming with up to 11 million microorganisms, including ones from raw meat. And just think about all the dirty diapers on that seat -- the same one you’re putting your produce on. A lot of grocery stores have antibacterial wipes handy, so use them.
Hotel and Cruise Ships Rooms You do not know who was the past person in your room or if they had a contagious illness. Door handles, remotes, the sides of the racks you open to pit your suitcase on, the desk, the light switch, the hair dryer…….and on and on. We purchase large wipes before a trip and take 10 minutes to wipe down the touchpoints in a hotel room.
Swimming Pools and Hot Tubs A pubic pool can have pounds of poop floating around according to Michele Hlavsa, RN, chief of the CDC's Healthy Swimming Program. Little kids can carry as much as 10 grams of leftover feces on their rear ends, she says. They don't make a habit of washing off before jumping in, so all that poop just rinses off into the pool. It adds up, and chlorine doesn't kill everything. The CDC found that more than half of pools test positive for E. coli, which can cause bloody diarrhea. Your best line of defense? Try not to swallow any water.
The bottom line is to be aware of the potential for disease exposure in public. Changing a few habits may keep you healthy. This is particularly important in times of high exposure risk such as flu season or on a cruise where Norovirus has broken out.
This is a post that I am scratching my head about writing. The question is whether I should risk grossing you out.
On the one hand: “fore warned is for armed.” On the other hand: “ignorance is bliss.” If you read down the list, you will get grossed out as you hit some of the places that there are nasty contaminations, like the ones in your bathtub.
The short story, anything that people touch can have germs that may make you sick on it. Anything that people can cough or sneeze onto has germs that can make you ill. Anytime you flush, spray or splash, you can spread germs onto things that you trust are clean.
By the way, not only are all germs are bad, the presence of the ones that are not bad resists the growth of ones that are bad. Think about the good germs as being a rich, full grass lawn. Weeds have a more difficult time growing in a healthy lawn than one that isn’t full and healthy. It’s the same for germs. There are actually proven studies that adding good germs (Probiotics) to surfaces helps resist the growth of harmful germs, bacteria and viruses.
Dirty Places in the Home
Railings: People need railings, particularly the ones that are most susceptible to getting sick from germ exposure. We grab them when we are sick, but very few people ever clean them. Even when we are not sick, we deposit oil and debris from our skin onto the railings which are rich nutrients for when someone who has germs on their hands touched the railing.
Kitchen Sink: Imagine you drop a piece of fruit into the kitchen sink. Most people would pick it up and eat it without washing it first. Remember draining the “juice” from the raw chicken or beef into the sink last night? How about the food from rinsing your plates before popping them into the dishwasher? The food which can grow bad germs can sit out all night and grow Salmonella or E. coli. Wet dish clothes and sponges are even better places from germs to grow than sink surfaces. Many people use these for days of not weeks at a time without disinfection.
Very often, people do a better job of disinfecting their toilet than they do their kitchen sink. The solution is to sanitize your sink with bleach or other disinfection product. To answer the obvious question, yes, toilet bowl cleaner would do the job. Just make sure you rinse out the residue of the cleaner.
Tooth Brushes: Every time you flush the toilet, small particles of moisture go into the bathroom air. They settle on things that are exposed in the bathroom, including your toothbrush. You also have the contamination of the germs in your mouth growing on your toothbrush which can make you ill when your immune system is lowered. Keep tooth brushes away from aerosolized germs and replace toothbrushes often.
Touch Points: So, when was the last time that you cleaned your light switches? It’s a pretty good bet that someone has had a cold or other contamination and turned on the lights since that time. This is one of the many touch points in your home. The handle on the refrigerator, the salt and pepper shakers, the door knobs, the part of chair that you grab to pull out the chair are all touch points. Let’s add a few more like your computer keyboard, remote control, phone, faucets, handle to flush the commode. It would be an impossible battle to keep up with disinfecting all of the touch points. What you can do is wash your hands OFTEN!
Bathtub: Thank you WEBMD for pointing this one out. I had ever thought about the fact wiping with paper does not remove every last bit of fecal matter from the skin. They tell us that: “The place where you clean yourself is not so clean itself. A recent study found staphylococcus bacteria in 26% of the tubs tested. A separate study had even worse findings for whirlpool tubs. When Texas A&M University microbiologist Rita Moyes, PhD tested 43 water samples from whirlpools, she found that all 43 had mild to dangerous bacterial growth. Almost all showed bacteria from fecal matter; 81% had fungi, and 34% contained staph bacteria.”
Fixtures that Spray Water: This includes your sink spigots, hand sprayers, garden hoses and bathroom tub spouts and showers. The screens and other surfaces of these items accumulate a biofilm that can grow bacteria and other contaminants. The fixtures always spray a fine mist into the air around the fixture We constantly breath those fine mists that we can’t see in and can have the contagions settle and grow in our lungs. We also battle the contaminations that live in the water system. As an example, Legionella can live in hot water tanks set below 140 degrees F.
The bottom line is that we need to be aware of the places germs and other contaminants can live. We need to clean and disinfect these areas, particularly whenever we are avoiding germs from another household member who is ill. In the end, our best defense is to regularly wash our hands.