Keeping Winter Germs at Bay

Payne, with the St. Mary's County Health Department, offered the standard advice for blocking the speeding microbes: Cover your mouth with a tissue and throw it away. If you don't have a tissue or handkerchief, cough or sneeze into the elbow of your sleeve. Wash your hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water.

"That's still the best," said Calvert County's Conway. But when you can't wash hands, "definitely use the alcohol-based hand sanitizers. If you're in your car eating your McDonald's french fries and you can't wash your hands and you've been all over creation shopping, pull out your hand sanitizer and give yourself a squirt."

And how long does it take to do a thorough job? Long enough to sing a song -- the CDC suggests putting hand washing to song. Sing the Happy Birthday song or the ABC song, twice, under your breath while you scrub.

Inside the grocery store, a baby sat in the child seat section of a shopping cart, slobbering on its handle.

The public health folks also cautioned against this. They advised wiping down the shopping cart's handlebar and other areas a child might touch or bite (let the onlookers scoff). Many baby stores now carry disposable liners specifically designed to line shopping carts and restaurant highchairs.

If you can avoid it, Conway said, "don't take your baby places where they're going to come into contact with a bunch of people who are coughing and sneezing. Just use some common sense to keep them healthy. In the spring, they can come out."

Not on the Menu

Sitting in a restaurant, a friend and I passed the hand cleaner back and forth. Perhaps we should have also brought a sanitized wipe (I know I had one) to swab down the table.

I watched the busboy wipe down the three tables and seats adjacent to ours with one universal damp, dingy rag, then toss it in his plastic basin filled with dirty dishes. To his credit, he was pleasant, quick and efficient. It's impossible to efficiently monitor the food droppings of toddlers. Janse suggests, along with a good wipe, whip out the place mats. They can be purchased for well under a dollar. Tuck a few in the diaper bag or even in your carry-on for the airplane.

In the Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries restaurant in Waldorf, I watched the cook to see whether he would discard his plastic gloves after touching raw meat and don a fresh pair to handle the cooked hamburgers. He did.

"Gloves are changed every time you interact with raw meat, or you touch your hat or you touch your apron or you pick something up off the floor," said owner Robin Kurst, as she ripped off the old and pulled on the new. Kurst added, "I'm pretty sure that effective in 2007 in Charles County, gloves are going to be mandatory for every restaurant."

Don't be afraid to dine out. Charles Gerba, an environmental microbiologist and co-author of "The Germ Freak's Guide," said, "Fifty percent to 80 percent of all food-borne illnesses originate in the home."

If not cleaned properly, some of the most germ-ridden places in the home are the kitchen sink, dishcloth, garbage can, refrigerator and cutting board. "Ninety percent of kitchen sinks carry salmonella," Gerba said. "If an alien came from space and studied bacterial counts in the typical home, he would probably conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and pee in your sink," Gerba said, quoting from the book.