If that isn't true then washing your hands is a bunch of crap as a method of avoiding the flu! Wouldn't the homeless be more susceptible to the flu since they receive ONLY cash & coin? Which calls our attention to the story published last month's Science Friday: "Ninety percent of the paper money in circulation in the U.S. contains traces of cocaine, according to a study by Yuegang Zou a chemist at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. That’s up from 67 percent, as measured by Zou in a similar 2007 study."Professor Zou spoke at the American Chemical Society revealing: "The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone." There were cities in which 100 percent of the banknotes contained traces of cocaine. These cities include: Detroit, Michigan; Boston, Massachusetts; Orlando, Florida; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California according to CNN.
Yuegang Zou: "found that $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills were more likely to be positive for cocaine than $1 bills. "Probably $1 is a little too less to purchase cocaine," Zuo said "I don't know exactly [why]. It's an educated guess." The speculations that cocaine is spread by currency counting machines does not seem to hold since dollar bills are more likely to be used in bank currency counting machines as well as larger demoninations.
"For years, health agencies have advised people to wash their hands after touching cash for sanitary reasons. Disease-causing organisms such as staphylococcus aureus and pneumonia-causing bacteria have been detected in paper bills. According to a 2002 study published in the Southern Medical Journal, 94 percent of the tested bills had potentially disease-causing organisms." Although that study was related only to the western Ohio: "These results suggest a high rate of bacterial contamination of one-dollar bills."
As our technology increases so seems our ability to test for the contamination of currency which contributes to our concern over money and bacteria. In 1972 the University of California quoted as published in the American Medical Association Journal (JAMA 2008) by South Coast Today.com and everyone else on the internet but not found at the AMA website "found 13 percent of coins and 42 percent of bills were contaminated with bacteria. A report in the journal Infections in Medicine last (1997) year found just 3 percent of coins and 11 percent of bills were dirty, concluding the country had cleaned up its act."
It's the "pneumonia-causing bacteria" on bills that has us concerned. That is until we read the comments at CNN with a professional who was not involved in Zuo's study.
We contacted Professor Shirley Lowe who authored the 1972 California study and others: one to verify that there was a 1972 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and two to find out what's scarier than swine flu infected dollar bills. Until we get a response we'll keep paying with plastic!
From Shirley Lowe
ReplyDeleteAdjunct Professor
University of California, San Francisco.
Basically what my study showed is that in this country money is no more likely to transmit infectious agents than other objects, like doorknobs, faucet handles (anything that is handled a lot) etc. The influenza virus is an enveloped virus which means that it does not survive well in the environment. I think the likelihood of it being transmitted by money etc is extremely low.
On the other hand many viruses that cause the common cold do not have an envelope, are more stable and can be transmitted by hands, phones, etc.
Our money is pretty clean and I don't think it needs to be decontaminated. Some studies of money in the developing world did show that some enteric pathogens such as Shigella, could be isolated from bills, but because our level of hygiene is quite high, I did not find this in my study.
No followup has been done.