Is Your Car Making You Sick ?
It turns out that my car is probably a rolling Petrie dish of germs and microbes, according to a recent scientific study.
Oh, boy. I spend a lot of time in my car, traveling to interviews and events to write about. In fact, my car is my home away from home, sort of. It's loaded with books, CDs, gym bag, extra shirts, shorts and golf equipment.
And, there's more. Since I'm in the car so often, I enjoy eating while I drive. I know, I know, I'm a distracted driver. The way I figure it, a hungry driver is more dangerous than one popping a bite of egg and cheese wrap into his mouth. Hunger can drive me to road rage; fill my stomach and I'm docile as the family dog who rolls on its stomach and wants a good scratch.
But the scientists contend that kernels of popcorn, nuts and shreds of lettuce or flecks of peanut butter dropped on the car floor are feeding the gazillion of germs breeding under my nose. I guess these scientists were bored one day and swabbed car handles, steering wheels, shift knobs, radios and seats. Before you can say yuck, the tests uncovered staphylococcus to bacillus cereus crawling all over the place.
The names of these germs are enough to scare you. All you need to know is that these germs can cause food poisoning, impetigo, severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. You're a reasonably clean person who washes his car and pays a few bucks extra to have the inside wiped down. So how do they get there?
According to the experts, we track these potentially killer germs into our cars on the shoes that pick up every microscopic bug you walk on, the pets poised in your car and whatever family and friends carry with them. So what's left, we insert ourselves in a bubble?
And here's a thought to make you sceeve: you touch all those bugs with your hands every day, and then you eat with them. Would you like a little bacillus cereus with that cheeseburger?
With all this news about how we're under attack from germs at every angle, how did we survive this long? Before sanitary wipes and antibacterial hand cleanser, I must have downed a mouthful of microbes with every bite. As a kid, I drank out of the garden hose in my parents' backyard and always shared a bottle of soda with my best friend. It's a wonder I made it this far.
So as I cruise down I-95, minding my own business and munching a chocolate covered rice cake, I'm exposing myself to enough microbes to knock an elephant off its feet. It seems that the crumbs of food you leave behind in the car when you eat are feeding the bugs creeping all around you. Hold onto your hamburger when you consider that when your car is locked up baking in the heat, you're giving the little buggers a shot in their arms, making them even stronger to attack your immune system.
You want to protect yourself from disease, don't eat in your car. Some scientists compare it to eating food off the floor. Of course, you can scour your car with bleach, but I don't think it's beneficial for my Corinthian leather. The truth is you would have to scrub down the interior daily. I'm not prepared to become that anal about the cleanliness of my car's interior. My car is about as clean as a locker room.
I'm hanging a no eating sign off my rearview mirror which depicts a hamburger with a strike line across it. That's supposed to remind me that every time I eat in my car, I could be endangering my health. But look, snacking makes a long drive bearable. In fact, if I'm stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, nibbling a few pretzels keeps me sane.
For my health's sake, while driving, I've sworn off the 5-second rule that says you can eat food that's hit the floor if you can grab it in less than five seconds. As I enter the car, I could slip off my shoes with all those germs riding on the soles and slip them into a container that I spray with disinfectant.
I'm also considering wearing sanitary protective gloves to munch a few peanuts. I can imagine my kids' reactions as I pull on the gloves and they threaten to dive out the windows. I pledge to carry sanitary hand cleaner in my glove compartment at all times, too. The problem is when you touch the food with your microbe-free hands, your potato chips taste more like Lysol than cool ranch. That will stop me from eating in the car and knock out those staphylococcus and bacillus cereus punk microbes.
Frank Szivos is a free-lance writer who is taking all precautions to avoid germs in his car.
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