Finding the Germs

They are everywhere...at the store, at work and in your home.. Were talking about germs.. During ...  More »

They are everywhere...at the store, at work and in your home.. Were talking about germs.. During this contagious flu season more people are paying close attention to their surroundings. But no matter what cautions you take...germs are always there. With help from the State Health Department...Brad Feldman goes hunting for germs...and is surpassed but what he found. The question is how often do you come in contact with germs in any given day? The answer is a lot. But you cant know for sure since germs cannot be seen by the naked eye. (Mike Trythall/ ND Dept. of Health) "You touch a button, a door knob and you pick it up. There are surface contaminants and you pass it on to the next surface you are touching." Mike Trythall with the North Dakota Department of Health is helping up get a more precise answer. He gave me some trays and cotton swabs.. I hit the streets looking for germs...going to some of the most common places you would come across in a given day. A door handle, an elevator button, the keyboard at your desk, and a water fountain. I then hit the store swabbing the handle on a pop cooler, credit card machine, a shopping cart and then on the way out... (Sonnd - gum ball machine) the gumball machine. To close out the experiment I swabbed some things just out of curiosity a dollar bill, coins, a gas pump and the bottom of a pair of shoes. I let the germs incubate for about two days...and then looked for the results. (Mike Trythall/ ND Dept. of Health) "I dont see nothing here that is unusual that you wouldn't see everyday on almost any surface." "Some of those plates are pretty clean considering what you were swabbing...the dollar bill you swabbed doesn't have a lot of growth from it." We found germs on each of the items we swabbed. The more interesting items included the germs we found on the shopping cart and the gumball machine... But the worst we found...were the germs we walk on... (Mike Trythall/ ND Dept. of Health) "You've got a very good grouping of different types of bacteria. You have got some molds growing here it looks like what would probably be like a microcaucus. There is some staph there is some strep colonies here that are growing quite well.." the experiment goes to show...just about any where you go or anything you touch has germs... (Mike Trythall/ ND Dept of Health) "If nothing else the message is wash your hands and do it often and use soap to do it all because you are picking up things in the environment all the time." Brad Feldman KX News Trythall says the hand sanitizers work but using soap and water is the most effective way to get rid of germs.  « Less