International Specialty Supply
Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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International Specialty Supply Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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820 East 20th Street Cookeville, TN 38501 USA 931 526 1106
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Another
Reason Sprout Production Workers Need to Scurb Hands After Breaks SproutNet International
Specialty Supply May
25, 2001 Synopsis
of article "Paper Money Crawling With Germs" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/Health/20010524/UCASHN.html Dr.
Peter Wender and his associates were cited as telling the annual meeting of the
American Society of Microbiology in Orlando, Fla. that dollar bills in
grocery-store checkout lanes and at high-school sporting events were
contaminated with staphylococcus aureus, bacteria found in the nose, and
klebsiella pneumoniae, fecal bacteria. The story says that both bacteria can
produce a toxin that causes food poisoning and that can leave healthy people
wretchedly sick. The
research team also found that almost all the bills were contaminated with common
germs such as streptococcus, enterobacter, pseudomonas and other bugs that don't
pose much of a risk to the general public, but can be dangerous to
immune-compromised patients such as the frail elderly or people with HIV-AIDS. The research left no doubt that "money can be a vehicle for the rapid spread of bacteria." Three
decades ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a
landmark study on the cleanliness of cash. It found that 13 per cent of coins
and 42 per cent of bills harbored objectionable germs such as fecal bacteria
and staphylococcus aureus. This
new study is different from previous research in the field because it tried to
measure the presence of bacteria on money circulating in the general community,
rather than in hospitals, in this case Dayton, Ohio. But it found high rates of
bacteria on dollar bills. Seven per cent of the money showed traces of the more
serious bacteria, 86 per cent harbored more mundane bugs, and only 7 per cent
were germ-free. |