Did you know that punching in your number at the ATM machine could be riskier to your health than lowering your derrière on a public toilet seat?
As you place your naked rear-end onto a public toilet seat, you may feel a little squeamish imagining who sat here just before you. Well aware of the numerous lurking bugs, you are cautious not to touch the seat and carefully wash and dry your hands afterwards. You don’t give a second thought, however, when tapping your pin code into the paypoint as you check out of the supermarket.
Yet here on the paypoint, as well as at the ATM, your local restaurant and even your doctor’s office, lurk the same bacteria isolated from toilet seats and often in greater abundance!
Dr Linda Friedland explores some simple solutions to the bugs and germs lurking in public places.
For example:
Mobile phones
You put your mobile phone down (almost anywhere) on average a hundred times a day. Twenty per cent of people in a recent study regularly talk or text while on the toilet, even in public bathrooms. Several studies on mobile phones found that they carry heaps of bacteria, including staphylococcus (which causes skin infections), pseudomonas (eye infections), and salmonella (gastroenteritis). Most mobiles are sheathed in cases, which provide plenty of crevices for germs to hide.
Solution: Use a disinfecting wipe on your phone a few times a week and be conscious of where you put it down.
Movie theatres
When you have so many people in close quarters for hours at a time, germs most certainly thrive. A recent study in the Journal Of Medical Virology reports that cold and flu viruses can survive for 18 hours on hard surfaces. The most common bugs that lurk in movie theatres are viruses, especially rhinovirus, responsible for the common cold. These are usually passed by “droplet” spread between people in close contact. The problem is that you may be contagious a day before your runny nose symptoms appear, so many people go to the movies not knowing they are sick yet.
Solution: Keep hand sanitiser in your handbag and use before eating and after getting up from your seats. Eating popcorn with your hands after touching surfaces and escalators puts you at risk of contamination.
Gym equipment … especially weightlifting gloves
A study in the Clinical Journal Of Sport Medicine found that the virus responsible for the common cold (rhinovirus) is present on more than 60 per cent of the gym equipment at the fitness centres tested. Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that the weightlifting equipment was contaminated significantly more often than aerobic equipment (75 per cent as opposed to 50 per cent). Even worse, the study found that disinfecting the equipment twice a day didn’t lower the virus count much.
Solution: Carry antiseptic wipes and hand sanitiser in your gym bag.
Wipe down the equipment immediately before and after using. Try to avoid touching your face between sets of exercises, since most colds are transmitted through hand-to-nose contact. A Japanese study found that staph bacteria bind strongly to polyester, which is used in many gloves. And that includes MRSA bacteria (Methicillin resistant staph bugs).
The good doctor also includes suggestions for elevator buttons, the grocery trolley, your vacuum cleaner and even the kitchen sink.
