Fill 'Er Up...I Won't Touch It!

Not With A 10-Foot Pole

Just as I sent my haz-mat suit out to the cleaners comes word that Dr. Germ has another case on his hands...er...on OUR hands.
Dr. Germ, a.k.a microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona has decided that it's time to reaffirm what he's said all along: illness-causing germs are everywhere, and we're picking them up in the places we might least expect. Now, the doctor has provided the results of research done jointly with Kimberly-Clark's Professional's Healthy Work Place Project, and it's not good for us.
Get gas? Use the ATM? Feed the parking meter? Hoo boy, are YOU in for some hand-wringing! Here are the figures concerning vile germs in those places:
71% of all gas pump handles are literally crawling (like your skin is now) with infectious germs.

68% of corner mailboxes are likely to be bacterial playgrounds as well. Gerba describes these as "highly contaminated." Places on my body and inside my body are already itching...

43% of all escalator rails are potential disease traps, according to Gerba.

41% of all those ATM's we touch are touching us back, it seems.

Parking meters? 40% of them are covered with creepy-crawlie germs, too.

Crosswalk buttons and vending machines are almost safe in comparison, since only 35% of them hold the possibility that you will come down with something after an exchange.

The impetus for the study, say officials at K-C is that sick employees cost an average of $1320 per employee per year. Of course, that comes from a company that manufacturers things like sanitary wipes, so...
Cynical though I might be, I'm still wiping the keyboard off in five seconds.
With a sanitary wipe, of course.