That's Fit

I will never forget a TV special I saw several years ago about household germs. They claimed that germs could "jump" from a toilet bowl and surfaces such as doorknobs were just breeding grounds for virtual colonies of little beasties.

Now the new germ-haven is your computer keyboard. Makes sense. Most people may remember to wash their hands before eating, but who thinks to wash their hands before using the computer? And, other than a perfunctory wipe down, my guess is there aren't too many people who really clean their keyboards.

Research from Great Britain indicates that computer keyboards may have more germs than toilet seats. The study was somewhat limited -- swabs were taken from 33 keyboards, one toilet seat, and one bathroom door handle. Several keyboards were dirty enough to be health hazards and one of the keyboards had five times the germs found on the toilet seat.

But even though the findings are a bit gross, there's no reason for alarm. The solution is simple: wash your hands before starting to work and clean your keyboard regularly. You may also want to consider minimizing the amount other co-workers use your keyboard.

For those of you out there who travel a lot, this may pique your interest. A team of investigators went undercover to try and find out hotel protocol concerning those iconic drinking glasses you see everywhere. What they discovered might not surprise some people: those glasses have never seen the inside of a dish washer.

Okay, so that's a bit harsh. Not every hotel operates in the same way, but the ones they caught on video certainly don't exercise the strictest cleaning practices. And we're not talking about cheap establishments here! Embassy Suites, for example, wouldn't be classified as a sub-par accommodation.

Watch the video and see for yourself. Make no mistake about it, this is a controversial issue. Many hotels have moved to plastic, single-use disposable cups to prove they're sanitized. I would take that any day over glass cups that could have been washed with my own dirty bathroom cloth, in my own dirty sink, by hands that had previously cleaned a toilet. That scenario is from the video. You don't have to be a germaphobe to appreciate solid cleaning practices on things you'd expect to be cleaned properly.

Can hand sanitizers cause alcohol poisoning in children? There are stories out there of it happening, including one of a child acting disoriented and off-balance after drinking half of a bottle, and a little girl becoming incoherent and lethargic after being seen by classmates licking sanitizer off her hands.

According to experts the average child would have to drink at least an ounce or more of hand sanitizer to notice any serious effects from the alcohol content, but regardless kids should always be supervised and the sanitizer stored out of reach -- just to be on the safe side.

Over-reaction, or hazardous material?

Forget air "purifiers," those are sooooo outdated. How about an air disinfector? The English company Inov8 has invented the Air Disinfector, a gadget that essentially creates fresh air indoors. Marketed mainly at hospitals, it's currently available only in Europe but is being tested here in the U.S. with the intent of making it available here soon. About the size of a flower vase, the Air Disinfector works by creating reactive hydogen radicals and pumping them into the air, instantly killing microbes and bacteria in the surrounding air.

Now there's a declaration you won't see in many health outlets. Stop drinking bottled water? To be fair, the tap versus bottled water bit has been argued before. This article, however, is playing devil's advocate in tackling the issue from a different perspective. Here are a few reasons one might consider dropping bottled water.

Penny pinchers might be surprised at how much of a poor deal bottled water really is. Buying it from a vending machine for $1 (a common price in many places) puts its value at 5 cents an ounce. Now start thinking about gasoline prices for a moment. From a consumer perspective, $3 per gallon gas prices comes out to roughly 2 cents an ounce. Are we really paying that much more for a renewable commodity like water?

Here's an eye opener for your local school district. After a middle school in Oregon banned students from bringing water bottles, Kyleray Katherman decided to do a little experiment. He had a thought that the water fountains they were forced to use weren't the cleanest sources of water on campus. Kyleray's experiment was to take samples from four water fountains and a toilet and then measure the bacteria content in each one.

Turns out the water fountains were crawling with germs, and the toilet water was clean. What's amazing is that the 13-year-old used cotton to swab the entire rim of the toilet bowl! And he took samples from the water fountains by swabbing the spigots where most kids get the closest with their mouths.

Kyleray proved his point. The water fountains were in need of a robust cleaning, but the school didn't budge on their "no water bottles" policy. However, spigots and casting were replaced at a few fountains and teachers are beginning to offer water in the classroom. More districts could learn a lesson from North Bend Middle School, or even find a new alternative like water coolers.

Exercise is great for your immune system, but the gym may not be if you don't pay attention. Bacteria and other microbes love the moisture of sweat and shower stalls, and although gyms do what they can to make the environment as clean as possible (i.e. by making hand sanitizer and clean towels available) it's ultimately up to you to protect yourself. Wash your hands frequently, wipe seats and handles with a clean towel (not the one you've been carrying around with you from machine to machine) or a disposable wipe, and bring your own mat for stretching and yoga sessions. There are even handy gadgets out there like these HandleBuddies, designed to stand between you and the germs.

It might seem like a hassle, but it's worth it. You can catch more than just a cold if you're not careful -- even bacteria like MRSA and E.coli have been found on gym machine handle bars.

There was that whole "kitchen sponge fires in the microwave" fiasco a few months ago, and now the issue is coming back around again: just how good is the microwave at killing bacteria anyway?

Don't worry, we're not going back into the sponge thing again. Instead this time researchers looked at the ability (or lack thereof) of the microwave to kill harmful bacteria in food. Many people assume and rely on the fact that cooking food in the microwave is the same as cooking it anywhere else: the bacteria die and the food is safe. But that's not always the case. In fact, experts found that more cases of food poisoning occur after eating microwaved meals compared to food cooked in the conventional oven or on the stove top. The reason seems to be that microwaves have a tendency to leave "cold spots" where bacteria thrive.

So make sure you rotate and/or stir all food cooked in the microwave, and if it's something at all questionable maybe using the conventional oven would be better.

What you aren't aware of can't hurt you, right? We wish. Here is something that doesn't ring a bell every time we go to pick up our groceries: the handles of shopping carts are literally crawling with disgusting bacteria and germs. Okay, so the fear of using such a common item could border on obsessive compulsive, but that isn't stopping the state of Arkansas from passing legislation encouraging businesses to clean up those buggies.

How is this for following up with your constituency: legislator Fred Allen from Little Rock put the "Arkansas Health-Conscious Shopper Program" bill into action after hearing from many older women during his campaigning last fall. They voiced concerns over not wanting to go shopping due to the dirty nature of grocery carts. Mr. Allen thought they were on to something so he pitched the legislation and even cited a University of Arizona study which uncovered the truth about the matter.

It turns out that shopping cart handles are one of the dirtiest public surfaces you can touch, right next to public door handles and vending machines. Makes you think twice before putting your child in the front seat of one, doesn't it? Don't worry though, as germy as they might appear you would be hard-pressed to find medical cases where someone died from picking up their weekly shopping list.

This is a follow-up post to an earlier article on sanitizing kitchen sponges in the microwave, and all I have to say (between fits of laughter) is wow! Researchers at the University of Florida announced earlier this week that they had successfully killed 99% of bacteria and germs on a kitchen sponge by microwaving it on high for about 2 minutes. What they apparently neglected to mention (or maybe thought they didn't need to) is that the sponge needs to be wet.

So people all over the country gave the idea a shot, sticking dry sponges into microwaves and almost immediately (well, within 2 minutes I'm assuming) realized their grievous errors as their microwaves filled with flames, and their homes filled with smoke and the nasty smell of burnt tires.

Not to make light of anyone's misfortune, but it's so funny partly because I can actually see myself spacing out and throwing a dry sponge into the microwave to try this (I didn't, for the record). I guarantee, though, that as soon as I had a lump of flaming goop instead of a clean sponge and my fire alarm started going off I'd get it...of course it has to be wet first!

Researchers at the University of Florida have discovered that microwaving can kill stuff. People have been sanitizing kitchen sponges in the dishwasher for years, but turns out the microwave may be a faster, and more effective, way to go. Nuking your sponges on high for two minutes kills and/or immobilizes (immobilizes?) 99 percent of the bacteria, including nasty ones like E. coli, viruses, and bacterial spores.

Even though the idea didn't occur to me before now, this makes total sense. We all know that heat kills germs, and the microwave is really just cooking your sponge. But after reading this I can't help but laugh -- I have this picture in my head of a bunch of scientists with white jackets and goggles huddled around a microwave with a little yellow sponge spinning around inside on the turntable.

Go science!