Jenny Deam Denver Post Staff Writer

19 September 2005 Denver Post

(c) 2005 Denver Post.

Information Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning.

All rights reserved.

Oh, for a simpler time when the most pressing grocery store dilemma was

paper or plastic.

These days careful and correct shoppers now must decide between

waging germ warfare on the shopping carts or taking their chances

with the cooties left by those who came before.

During the past year, all 103 regional King Soopers grocery stores, as

well as 38 sister City Markets, have begun placing canisters of

anti-bacterial wipes next to the cart corrals so customers can give

their buggies a once-over to guard against germs.(HOW

ABOUT SOME LYSOL SANITIZING WIPES!!)

Similar dispensing is going on at Wild Oats Markets in the Denver area

as well at a handful of grocery chains across the nation.

Some say this is just another in a series of measures, gimmicks and

gadgetry that prove we are more attuned - the cynics would say obsessed

- with protecting ourselves and our families.

A year ago, staring down predictions of a wicked cold and flu season

coupled with the shortage of flu vaccines, the corporate types at King

Soopers decided to provide free wipes to anyone who wanted them.

'We did it purely as a customer service,' says Trail Dougherty, a

spokesman for the stores. He acknowledged the decision fell more in the

'nice thing to do/couldn't hurt' category than one based on scientific

research.

And, in fact, scientists themselves, as well as behaviorists, doctors

and the general public, seem split on the true effectiveness of wiping

down a grocery cart as a health precaution.

'These are people who clearly watch too much 'Monk,'' sighs Nancy Tomes,  referring to the cable-TV show about an obsessive-compulsive detective who is terrified of other people's germs.

'Lot of rampant anxiety' Tomes is a history professor at the State

University of New York at Stony Brook who wrote 'The Gospel of Germs:

Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life.' 'There is a lot of

rampant anxiety out there,' she says.

People grasp at things to protect themselves in a world that seems out

of control, she says. Whether swiping at germs in the grocery store is

necessary is open to debate. But, Tomes says, it makes people feel

better.

Lisa Girard, a Greenwood Village mother of two, says she never lets her

3-year-old daughter Nikki into the blue plastic King Soopers kiddie

carts without first wiping the child seat and all the handles with the

store-supplied wipes.

'I'm pretty adamant about it,' she says. 'It gives me peace of mind.'

Before the store handed them out, she used to bring her own.

However, Michelle Dennis, a Littleton mother of four, steers her cart

right by the wipes at the neighborhood King Soopers without stopping.

'I'm just not a germaphobe,' she says, balancing her 3-year-old

daughter, Jia Jia, on her hip. 'I have a 17-year-old, a 15-year-old and

a 13-year-old, and we never had things like this when they were little.

They turned out fine. I think kids need to be exposed to germs. That's

part of life.'

Dr. Michelle Barron medical director of Infection Control at the

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, is skeptical about the

big-picture effectiveness of this latest measure.

While swabbing a shopping cart with an anti-bacterial agent will help

destroy harmful bacteria, she cautions that the moment you touch the

handle with an unwashed hand or plunk a baby in the seat if he or she

has a soiled diaper, you have already recontaminated it.

Still, she knows shopping carts can get disgusting. And there is

certainly no harm in trying to clean them up a little. Just don't think

it will guarantee a pass from the next round of flu.

You don't want to know

Wanna know just how disgusting these little germ-mobiles can get?

Grocery carts were found to be veritable petri dishes teeming with

nastiness such as saliva, mucus, urine, fecal matter, as well as the

blood and juices from raw meat.

Swabs taken from handles and child seats in 36 grocery carts in San

Francisco, Chicago, Tucson and Tampa, Fla., found they ranked third

worst in both overall cleanliness and bodily fluid contamination. The

only things found to be ickier were playground equipment and the

armrests on public transportation.

In fact, grocery carts were even more vile than grocery store bathrooms,

which ranked seventh. The reason: the bathrooms are cleaned more often.

Daughtery at King Soopers says individual carts in his stores are

cleaned on a 'as-needed' basis and that the entire fleet gets a steam

cleaning four times a year.

Best move: Wash hands(HOW ABOUT LYSOL IC ANITMICROBIAL

SOAP!!)

Kelly Reynolds, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson,

and principal investigator on the shopping cart study, loves the idea of

stores providing wipes. She says some stores in her state also supply

free squirts of anti-bacterial gels for customers' hands.

But what about that notion - especially popular with bad housekeepers

and college students - that we are actually building stronger immune

systems by exposing ourselves to lots of crud?

Nice try, says Reynolds.

That, she says, is mostly an urban myth. While some resistant strains of

bacteria are being found in laboratories, it is not generally applicable to normal, everyday living.

To wipe or not to wipe may continue to be debated in grocery aisles, but

everyone agrees that the most effective defense against germs is still

the most basic: Wash your hands.

----------------------------------------

The top germ habitats

Workplace

Phone receiver, desktop, keyboard, elevator button, toilet seat

Outdoor/public surfaces

Playground equipment, escalator handrail, shopping-cart handle, picnic

tables, portable toilet

Top germ carriers

If you think a toilet seat harbors more germs than any other surface,

you're wrong. University of Arizona researchers say these 10 things are

nastier:

Phone receiver

Desktop

Computer keyboard/mouse

Doorknob

Escalator handrail

Elevator button

ATM buttons

Shopping cart handle

Kitchen sink

Subway turnstile

Looks like a number of new business opportunities to sell Professional

Lysol(r) Disinfectant Spray, Professional Lysol IC(r) Antimicrobial Hand

Soap, Lysol(r) Sanitizing Wipes. I hope you will use this information in

your calls and look for these new business building opportunities in

your area.