Germ Fact

More germs are passed by shaking hands than by kissing. This holiday season, be safe and liberally pass out hugs and kisses at every opportunity.

Eight Interesting Body Facts

More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose.

Capillaries are so small that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.

Your body has about 6 quarts (5.6 Liters) of blood. It circulates through the body three times every minute.

The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime.

The human body can function without a brain (although not long).

Humans are the only primates that do not have pigment in the palms of their hands

A mans testicles manufacture 10 million new sperm cells each day, enough to repopulate the entire planet in 6 months.

Drying Clean Hands

There are different ways of drying your hands in public places: paper towels, continuous-loop towels and warm-air dryers.

Washing the hands, and then using paper towels or continuous-loop cotton towels reduced the bacterial count by about 45 to 60 per cent, but washing, and then using a warm-air dryer actually increased the bacterial count by an average of 255 per cent.

The bacteria are already inside the warm-air dryers, due to the warm moist environment. Every warm-air dryer they tested had high bacterial counts on the air inlet and 97 per cent had them on the outlet nozzle surfaces as well. In most cases it doesn't matter, because our immune systems are resilient enough to keep the numbers of these bacteria low and the majority of these bugs are fairly harmless.

With a towel (paper or cloth) you can apply some decent mechanical friction to your hands. This is an important part of the hand-cleaning process. A towel soaks up the water, and the bacteria end up in the bin. You can dry 90 per cent of the surface area of your hand within 10 seconds with a towel. A warm-air dryer cannot dry your hands within 10 seconds. On average, it takes 50 seconds to dry 90 per cent of your hands.

Jet-air dryers have come on the market in the last few years. They blast air at enormous speed. If you can apply some mechanical friction, and rub your hands together, you can dry 90 per cent of your hands within 10 seconds. If the jet-air dryer has a good intake filter, it will stop the bacteria that are already floating in the bathroom air from getting sucked in and blown around. Warm-air dryers were not installed to improve hygiene, but to cut costs.

Scratch Remedies

Most folks under 30 have never heard of using the relatively painless Mercurochrome in lieu of that nasty stinging Iodine. It stained your flesh pinkish-red. The FDA put limitations on the sale of Mercurochrome in 1998 and stated that it was no longer considered 'Generally Recognized As Safe' over-the-counter product. The main active ingredient in Mercurochrome is mercury.

Speaking of Iodine, it burned like fire when applied to an open wound, because it had an alcohol base. Many doctors today use a water-based iodine as an antiseptic, as it has one of the broadest germ-killing spectrums. This old school remedy is rarely found in home first aid kits anymore. Alas, change comes too late for some of us.

Purse Germs

One of the most germ infested places many come into contact with is the bottom of a woman's purse. Many women fear the germs of public toilet seats, but don’t think twice about placing their purses down on the floor of the stall.

They also set them on the floor while riding the bus, in the car, at a restaurant, in a bar, or on floor at the office. Then, when they get home and set that same purse bottom on the kitchen counter or the dining room table.

Nelson Laboratories tested a random selection of ladies’ purses and found Pseudomonas, staphylococcus aurous, salmonella, and e-coli. Many of the handbags also had fecal contamination. Something to think about.