Germaphobic or Germagenius? - a podcast by WNYC Studios

In the heat of summer, everywhere in the city can feel sweaty, sticky, and smelly. It’s enough to make you want to douse everything in sanitizer to kill off all the germs. But which of the little bugs around us will actually make us sick — and which won’t?

We took an expert with us to places listeners said gave them the jeepers. Susan Perkins is a microbiologist at the American Museum of Natural History. She curated the museum’s current exhibit The Secret World Inside You.

Public restroom

Studies of the microbes in public bathrooms have found an extraordinary diversity. Bathrooms have more kinds of bacteria than there are kinds of birds in North America!

That’s little solace for germaphobes though.

More reassuring is that you’ve got skin, and it’s a pretty tough barrier. So even though toilet seats will probably have some fecal or skin bacteria, you’re not going to catch an infection from just sitting there. Dr. Perkins adds, “It might be a matter of taste that you don't want to sit your naked bum where someone else's naked bum was and that’s fine — but you're probably not going to get sick.”

Just a harmless Pokemon Go character - not a pathogen.
(Elaine Chen)

A real issue would be if there’s no soap, said Dr. Perkins. Water by itself isn’t going to do much; it’s soap that can break open most microbial cell membranes and kill them. Why do you want to kill them? While none of the bathroom bugs are likely to make you sick by being on your skin, it’s not so great to eat them or put them on your eye.

Garbage on the sidewalk

Oh, the smell of garbage in the summer! Yes, part of that odor is coming from microbes; they’re munching on food waste. That ability is a big reason our world isn’t just filled with corpses and dead plants; microbes break all of that stuff down. The microbes then produce some stinky chemicals into the air.

But breathing in that air doesn’t mean you’re breathing in those microbes. You’re just breathing in microbe farts.

Subway

The dark heart of every New Yorker’s fear about germs: one listener told us he learned to subway surf specifically to avoid touching the subway pole.

Headlines from a study last year of the microbes in the New York City subway didn’t help. The Washington Post declared ”From beetles to bubonic plague: Bizarre DNA found in NYC subway stations.” Others mentioned anthrax and superbugs.

This video by the Wall Street Journal explains why the scientists chose to look at the subway.

But Dr. Perkins said some headlines oversimplified the findings of the study done by Chris Mason of Weill Cornell, who's been a collaborator with the museum.

It’s a challenge trying to identify microbes. Most scientists rely on fragments of DNA, as opposed to the entire genome, to tag particular bacteria. And sometimes, those fragments seem to match up with really scary germs. But often, what they actually find are pieces of harmless microbes that might be distant cousins to something dangerous.

And that subway pole? Not a very hospitable place for microbes to live. The metal may have some microbial material on it, but those little guys are likely not alive.

And about that hand sanitizer….

Dr. Perkins would love to take away all those ubiquitous bottles of Purell.

In a hospital, using hand sanitizer makes sense. Patients are vulnerable and at risk from deadly infections. But for everyday things, shaking hands, petting a dog, eating a burger, hand sanitizer is overkill.

Dr. Perkins explained that sanitizer “destroy[s] that healthy community [that lives on your skin and] gives you a layer of protection.”  

Though research on the microbiome is still evolving, one thing is clear: microbes live in an ecosystem. Sure, some of them might be dangerous, but others might be helping us fight off disease. And the problem with hand sanitizer is that it kills almost all of them.

So Dr. Perkins’ simple advice to us all: wash your hands with soap and water, after the bathroom, and before you eat.

Contribute your microbes to science! This month, on weekend afternoons, the American Museum of Natural History is swabbing visitors' tongues, noses and hands for a study on the healthy microbiome. Click here for more information. 

 

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