People who wash their hands with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of disease-causing microbes on their hands and may play a role in transmission of bacteria in public settings according to research published in the May issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"Hand washing with soap and water is a universally accepted practice for reducing the transmission of potentially pathogenic microorganisms. However, liquid soap can become contaminated with bacteria and poses a recognized health risk in health care settings," says Carrie Zapka from GOJO Industries in Akron Ohio, the lead researcher on the study that also included scientists from BioScience Laboratories in Bozeman, Montana and the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Bulk-soap-refillable dispensers, in which new soap is poured into a dispenser, are the predominant soap dispenser type in community settings, such as public restrooms. In contrast to sealed-soap dispensers, which are refilled by inserting a new bag or cartridge of soap, they are prone to bacterial contamination and several outbreaks linked to the use of contaminated soap have already been reported in healthcare settings.

In this study Zapka and her colleagues investigated the health risk associated with the use of bulk-soap-refillable dispensers in a community setting. They found an elementary school where all 14 of the soap dispensers were already contaminated and asked students and staff to wash their hands, measuring bacteria levels before and after handwashing. They found that Gram-negative bacteria on the hands of students and staff increased 26-fold after washing with the contaminated soap.

Zapka notes that all the participants' hands were decontaminated after testing by washing with uncontaminated soap followed by hand sanitizer. At the conclusion of the study, all the contaminated soap dispensers were replaced with dispensers using sealed-soap refills. After one year of use, not one of them was found to be contaminated.

A copy of the research article can be found online at http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/9/2898.

BART is not an overly enthusiastic Simpson’s fan; it stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, rode it a couple of years ago, didn’t notice any bugs up, or out, my butt.

The New York Times reports that riders on the BART system (that’s in and around San Francisco) have long complained about germs in the hard-to-clean cloth seats. As Bob Franklin, the BART board president, acknowledged, “People don’t know what’s in there.”

The Bay Citizen commissioned Darleen Franklin, a supervisor at San Francisco State University’s biology lab, to analyze the bacterial content of a random BART seat.

Fecal and skin-borne bacteria resistant to antibiotics were found in a seat on a train headed from Daly City to Dublin/Pleasanton. Further testing on the skin-borne bacteria showed characteristics of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the drug-resistant bacterium that causes potentially lethal infections, although Ms. Franklin cautioned that the MRSA findings were preliminary.

High concentrations of at least nine bacteria strains and several types of mold were found on the seat. Even after Ms. Franklin cleaned the cushion with an alcohol wipe, potentially harmful bacteria were found growing in the fabric.

Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, played down the threat of infection from harmful bacteria on a BART seat. “I suspect it’s not a very big problem. That said, if there’s another way to do it, where you can clean it better, then you should do it.”

The rest of the story is about hygiene concerns as BART officials determine what kind of seats to install for a new fleet of cars in 2017.

It’s another in a long line of Gotcha-type stories that find bacteria on things – doorknobs, money, keyboards, sex toys.

Does it mean anything? And where are the sick people?

These kinds of Gotcha stories have been going on a long time.

In 1995, the front page of Toronto’s Globe and Mail proclaimed, "you probably handle an unimaginably dangerous collection of harmful bacteria" while going about your kitchenly chores, and that "90 per cent of food-related illness in the home could be prevented by using paper towels when preparing foods, especially meats."

The killer-dishrag story did meet the primary goal of its creators: to sell more sponges. Specifically, anti-bacterial sponges manufactured by 3M Co. of Minneapolis, Minn.

Dr. Charles P. Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, was contracted by 3M to perform tests of household dishrags and sponges in five U.S. cities and compare the results to the 3M sponge. Not surprisingly, Dr. Gerba found about 100 times more bacteria in dishrags retrieved from households.

Then the public relations firm hired by 3M peddled the results, taking Dr. Gerba on a five-city tour to release the results. That was in Aug. 1995. Several stories appeared on the U.S. wire services. Why the Globe decided to run the story at the end of Dec. 1995 remains a mystery.

Gerba showed up again with a bugs-in-reusable grocery bags report last year, that has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. And last week, Gerba was in the news again, saying his group had swabbed the handles of 85 grocery carts in four states for bacterial contamination and that 72 per cent of the carts had a positive marker for fecal bacteria.

Scientists say this study helps explain why earlier investigations found kids who touch the handles, are more likely than others, to get infected with bacteria like salmonella. Researchers reported in the Journal of Food Protection in June 2010 that kids can be exposed to raw meat and poultry products while riding in shopping carts.

But that was a study published in a peer-reviewed journal. The bugs-on-shopping-cart handles is a news story with legs – it keeps showing up – but the experimental design and conclusions have not been subject to peer-review, and the conclusions may be erroneous. Who knows?

On the shopping cart results, Dr. Neil Fishman, an infectious disease expert and director of health care epidemiology and infection prevention at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, is concerned that risk isn’t very big.

“I’d be worried if there was any evidence of any disease outbreaks related to shopping cart use. There isn’t — and we’ve been using them for a long time.”

While there may, indeed, be bacteria on shopping cart handles, they can also be found on doorknobs, countertops and a host of other items we touch every day, Fishman said. “My guess is that there are more bacteria on a car seat than on a shopping cart,” he added.

Josh Rosenau , writing for Science Blogs last night, picked up on the same theme, citing microbiologist Pat Fidopiastis as saying “none of this means much unless you can show me a significant risk involved with coming in contact with a shopping cart. You might be able to say that "X percent" more kids get sick if they touch a shopping cart handle versus a bathroom door knob, for example. But what are the actual numbers? Is this like saying, "More people get struck by lightning if they walk around outside in a storm than those who stay in their homes?”

Gotcha.

Styx was a terrible band that I actually went to see in Toronto in 1979.

South Park has an episode where Cartman has to sing the entire Styx song, Come Sail Away, whenever he starts the song.

Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was killed by a deadly bacterium found in the River Styx, rather than by a fever brought on by an all-night drinking binge in ancient Babylon, scientists believe.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that researchers in the US.. have found a striking correlation between the symptoms he suffered before his death in 323BC, and the effects of the highly toxic bacterium.

Alexander fell ill during a party at the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon, in modern Iraq. He complained of a ''sudden, sword-stabbing agony in the liver'' and had to be taken to bed where, over the next 12 days, he developed a high fever and excruciating pains in his joints.

His condition worsened, he fell into a coma, and is believed to have died on June 10 or 11, 323BC - just shy of his 33rd birthday. Historians have speculated that his death was brought about by the heavy drinking, typhoid, malaria, acute pancreatitis, West Nile fever or poisoning.

But experts who have reviewed the circumstances of his death believe instead that he may have been killed by calicheamicin, a dangerous compound produced by bacteria.

Antoinette Hayes, co-author of the Stanford University research paper and a toxicologist at Pfizer Research in the US., said,

''It is extremely toxic. It is a metabolite - one of hundreds produced by soil bacteria. It grows on limestone, and there's a lot of limestone in Greece.''
 

I haven’t put on makeup, played video games or combed my hair while driving – because I never do any of those things – but I’ve done everything else in this pop survey released in May and discussed by my friend and his wife as they drove to Vermont and back.

According to the study:

• 72% eat food while driving.
• 35% have taken clothes off or put clothes on while driving.
• 29% have kissed others while driving and 15% have performed sexual acts while driving.
• 28% have sent text messages while driving.
• 23% say they’ve combed their hair while behind the wheel.
• 13% have put on makeup while driving.
• 12% have written or read e-mails while driving.
• 10% reported reading newspapers or magazines while driving.
• 5% confessed to having played video games.
• 5% say they have shaved while behind the wheel.

Yesterday the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported those who eat while driving could be at a greater risk of food poisoning.

Scientists testing swabs taken from a typical family car discovered Bacillus cereus and staphylococcus in the interior, including the steering wheel, gear stick and door handles.

Another pop science survey that is meaningless.

Dr Anthony Hilton, reader in microbiology at Aston University said,

“People would be horrified at the prospect of eating from a toilet seat however they ought to be aware that eating from a contaminated car dashboard may represent the same health hazards.”

Always a possibility. Another survey revealed 58 per cent of car owners had found food remains lying around the interior when cleaning out the car.

That doesn’t mean people eat it: hint, don’t eat the food lying around in a car.