Dr. Ron Cutler, a biomedical scientist in London specializing in infectious diseases and their control and treatment, has run studies at Queen Mary – University of London, proving that such things as restaurant high chairs and your car’s steering wheel are likely to have more germs than a public toilet seat.
Now he’s examined 200 bills of currency (British bank notes) and 45 credit cards and discovered that 26 per cent of the notes and 47 per cent of the cards had high levels of bacteria. In other words, money and credit cards are dirtier than a toilet seat. Gross.
But it’s Cutler’s way of emphasizing the importance of hand hygiene to prevent the spread of infection.
He found E.coli on some of the notes in his latest study, together with Staphylococcus aureus which is often carried by humans without causing any problems but can lead to infections. Overall, 80 per cent of notes and 78 per cent of credit cards tested had some traces of bacteria.
Dr. Cutler is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of Biomedical Science Degree Programs in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary.
