Men’s beards may not be the cleanest places on earth, but Ina Chadwick identifies the real bacteriological risks.
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According to a recent list, “Where the Germs Are,” compiled by Kimberly-Clark for Medicine.net and Prevention.com, crosswalk buttons are number six on a list of things you might touch regularly that are contaminated and could cause illness. That little button? Holy moly! Here is the news: After repeated swipes with a swab, the adenosine triphosphate measurement was 35%. This is a co-enzyme that determines the levels of contamination by animal and vegetable bacteria, yeast, and mold cells and is used to monitor food sanitary conditions.
Thirty-five percent of the button was covered with contaminants? Which contaminants? And how big is that button and how long do you have to have contact?
Today’s information about safety has become a survivalist’s issue. A constant Internet stream of dirt for the hyper-vigilant.
Here are other germ gathering places on the hot spot List:
Gas Pump Handles 71% contaminated (In New Jersey you are not allowed to pump your own gas. Is that for sanitary reasons?)
Mailbox Handles (public) 68 % contaminated (Move to a rural or suburban area where the mailman gathers it from your supposedly sanitized personal mailbox.)
Escalator Rails 43% contaminated. (Go ahead, stand in the middle and see how safe you are.)
ATM Buttons 41% contaminated. (Did anyone check the hands of the teller who will give you the money personally?)
Parking Meters/Kiosks 40% contaminated. (Get a doctor’s note that your immune system is compromised and fight the parking ticket.)
Every day new studies yield new terrors, new red flags to put our culture on alert about protecting ourselves from potential diseases. We force our immune systems to be shielded from everyday bombardment, so much so that our bodies may have no time or experience to develop the necessary immunities we must build in order to truly survive.
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For centuries, mankind has been exposed to natural airborne and fluid and touch-borne bacteria. Yes, many people died younger, and yet others people survived. I am not advocating a back to the future survival of the fittest without modern medicine.
It was, after-all, a fight until death, in a madhouse at age 47, for a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis who tried to prove that hand-washing in a hospital-setting lowered mortality rates, especially in childbirth. The medical establishment in Vienna laughed at the germ theory until after his death in 1865.
The germ theory of disease had not yet been developed or acknowledged until the late 1860s. According to Wikipedia:
The theory of diseases was highly influenced by ideas of an imbalance of the basic “four humours” in the body, a theory known as dyscrasia, for which the main treatment was bloodlettings. Medical texts at the time emphasized that each case of disease was unique, the result of a personal imbalance, and the main difficulty of the medical profession was to establish precisely each patient’s unique situation, case by case.
And God bless Alexander Fleming and a whole crew of sleuthing chemists, also in the late 1800s, for pursuing germ-fighting discoveries. Even before the public announcement in 1928 that Penicillin was the antibacterial that would cure so many infections, there was public acceptance of these disease fighters. The drug was not released until the 1940s, and the next set of miracle drugs, more specific antibiotics, were routinely prescribed in our collective youth from the 1950s until only recently when we became aware of over-use and new bacteria that could survive the antibiotics. Now, we have bacteria-resistant infections. And bacteria are not so afraid of us. They’ve launched their own survival routines.
What Are Bacteria?
They are the smallest organisms that support their own reproduction and growth.
They are microscopic and live freely in the air, soil and water, on surfaces, and in and on the human body.
They are about two-thousandth of a millimeter in size. Most bacteria are harmless and, in fact, perform useful functions. Many of the bacteria in the body protect against the harmful effects of other organisms.
Germophobia or Normal Fear?
There was a man I once dated who cleaned the coiled telephone wire after using the phone—not the receiver but the cord. There was an old friend of mine who sniffed the drains in her suburban D.C. sinks nightly, and then poured fulminating antibacterial chemicals in them, and re-sniffed in the morning. Oh, for oceans she contaminated. Oh, for how much she worried about the sinks.
There was a virile cousin, a lawyer then psychiatrist who never married, and if you touched his plate even by accident he had to have a new one. His panic rose to blushing with fear levels. When he developed a blood cancer in his 40s, he wouldn’t go out of the house. He died a virgin because he wouldn’t let anyone touch him, much less put their lips to his mouth. These are real phobias and not to be laughed at. They’re all part of an anxiety disorder called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, (OCD.) They stop the sufferers from functioning normally. There are medications that help and behavioral treatments that can alleviate these irrational stressors.
Are we about to become an OCD society because companies like Kimberly-Clark produce surface sanitizers? These products are much needed in medical offices, but how much sanitizer do you need for your kitchen when a solution of baking soda or small amounts of ammonia or chlorine bleach will suffice, as will hot soapy water and a clean sponge?
When a recent article cropped up on a respectable site about there being hidden poop in a man’s beard, surely there is something happening in research and development for a beard sanitizer. Or rugged razors with sanitizer in them. One savvy commenter on a long thread on that post pointed out:
There was a Mythbusters episode that proved that fecal coliform bacteria are on everything everywhere. They found that it is on your toothbrush even if you keep your toothbrush covered and never take it in the bathroom. So freaking out about it is ridiculous. We have immune systems. If this was a big deal, we’d all already be dead.
What Should I Worry About?
Here are the suspects in serious illness-causing bacteria. Clostridia. Streptococci. Staphylococci. Listeria. Bacilli. Legionella.
Conditions under which they might be threatening can be found here:
Everything you touch can touch you back in some way. Who remembers telling your friend you were giving him “Cooties?” EEUW!
1. Avoid festering cesspools.
2. Avoid playing with anything that has maggots.
3. Avoid hazardous waste, which means body parts, and/or materials that are wet with fluids such as blood or pus.
4. Avoid shaking hands with someone who has a bad cold, though you’ve probably been subjected to that already, and it’s a virus, not bacteria. Just to make you really worry, viruses live a longer time on cold surfaces such as those that made the top six list.
5. Avoid eating your sandwhich on the floor of an airport bathroom.
6. Do not allow your bearded man to kiss a Basset Hound’s ears. They’ve been dragged through the dog’s own poop.
Photo—NIAID/Flickr
I love my bacteria! They live in my eyelashes and innumerable other spots on my body. I no longer have a beard, but my mustache is probably a haven for microscopic organisms. Ina has it right, the world is a dirty place. Always has been. I just don’t eat my sandwiches on the airport bathroom floor any more.