How Dirty Is It? Everyday items put to the test

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) –  They are everywhere. “We all have organisms on us, there’s 100 trillion organisms in your colon and on your skin,” said Mercer University Professor Dr. Jeffrey Stephens. With those kind of numbers, it would be tough to avoid germs. As soon as you wake up, they’re hanging around. You touch your steering wheel everyday, but what’s on the steering wheel besides my hands?
 
We brought in Mercer Microbiologist Kevin Drace and his students, Kylee Black and Chase Tolbert to find out. “Let’s just swab it and see how it goes,” said Tolbert. “(I’m) making sure to get all the areas of the swab here.”
 
We focused on some items you touch throughout your day. “So this device isn’t going to measure exactly how much bacteria is on there, but the potential growth that it may have,” said Tolbert. It gives us a number in return. “If it’s above 100, then yeah, it’s pretty dirty,” said Tolbert. How about that steering wheel? It scored a 735. Remember, the lower the number, the cleaner it is, so the steering wheel is pretty dirty. When you get to work, the average workplace fridge we tested scored a 55. For the women out there, your purse can end up in some not-so-clean places sometimes—the bottom of the purse scored a 345. You sit down at your desk, but what else is sitting with you? The desktop at work was a big fat failure. It scored a 1298. And it stayed bad, because the desktop keyboard scored a 1245. The neighboring mouse scored a 1734, and a push door scored a 545.
 
The team took a quick trip to the MTA Bus Station in Macon to check an outside door, which scored a 330. If you’re going to grab some gas, the push buttons scored a 199. And the gas handle was slightly dirtier, it scored a 266. The Macon-Bibb Government Annex elevator button, even with everyone pressing it all day, was pretty clean, scored a 123—but it’s still a failure.

Further tests showed nothing. “Lighter red plates, they’ll grow bacteria that are what we called gram positive, so those are gonna be bacteria like MRSA, staphoccolus orias, other strains,” said Drace. Staph infections and MRSA weren’t there in the places we checked, and neither was E. coli. “The sort of darker red plates–those will help us identify fecal contaminants, the bacteria that are commonly found in the intestines,” said Drace. “None of that.” So nothing bad that the team could find, but the potential is there.
 
The refrigerator handle and your cell phone passed the bacteria test, but that was it.
 
So, how do we stay generally healthy? I asked a Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Mercer. Dr. Jeffrey Stephens says humankind has developed it over time. “You have an immune system that’s evolved over hundreds of millions of years.”  Apparently, your body has a lot of different ways it fights germs. “It really is multifaceted,” said Stephens. “There’s mechanical, your skin, your barriers, and there’s your immune system also, and they all work together and usually live in a very happy, happy balance.” That balance should keep most people protected. “People worry about things like toilet seats and things which is insane, there’s no reason to be concerned about it,” said Stephens. “That may be kind of gross or unpleasant, but you don’t get infections from toilet seats.”
 
But that doesn’t mean you can relax—be sure to wash your hands! “Certainly hand hygiene is very important, we should all do that,” said Stephens.