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I donned a mask, armed myself with extra strength hand sanitiser, and ventured out of the house this past weekend to grab a drink with a friend.

I haven’t done this since March, so I was very proud of myself.

While it took a while to acclimatise to the outside world again (I had to remember how to ‘people’), what I hadn’t prepared for was the need for cash.

Most paid parking doesn’t accept credit cards, and car guards aren’t usually armed with Snapscan.

Like many out there, I abandoned cash altogether when the pandemic hit. It’s safer to tap a card than to exchange notes or coins, because, as we’ve been told, we should avoid surfaces that haven’t been sanitised.

Many restaurants and stores have taken this on board as well, preferring to go cashless to limit contagion.

But few have really looked into whether or not we’re justified in our fear of cash money until The Huffington Post decided it was time to bring in an expert.

“As humans, we’re bathed in microbes,” Philip M. Tierno, a professor of microbiology and pathology at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told HuffPost. “They’re all over us and the things we handle.”

Great. I’m off to douse myself in Dettol.

There’s more, though…

In 2014, researchers from New York University’s Center for Genomics and System Biology identified roughly 3 000 types of bacteria on cash notes from a bank in Manhattan.

These included bacteria linked to food poisoning, staph infections, gastric ulcers, and pneumonia.

“Typically humans deposit bacteria from three areas of the body ― respiratory secretions from the nose and mouth like streptococci, skin organisms like staphylococci, and faecal matter. As a society, we’re actually bathed in faeces,” Tierno said.

This Tierno guy is really messing with my vibe.

Luckily not everything is a pathogen, and for the most part, our immune systems can battle infection. It also takes a certain number of organisms to cause an infection, and that number varies across types of money.

Coins, which contain components like nickel, copper, silver, and zinc, some of which can be antimicrobial, seem to be a bit safer, while paper tends to house bacteria more easily.

So, about COVID-19. For now, scientists aren’t sure how many particles would need to be transferred to infect someone.

“Prior to touching your mouth, eyes or nose ― big points of entry into your body from your hands ― you should wash your hands,” [Tierno] said.

”Money is not necessarily the biggest conduit for infection, but any object touched multiple times in the day by different people, like your phone, can be a problem. That’s why you should periodically disinfect your phone as well.”

In general, Tierno wants everyone to wash their hands after handling money, even after we find a vaccine.

If you’re one of those people who always dreamed of rolling around on a bed full of cash…I’m sorry.

[source:huffpost]