Handle money then wash your hands

I read a disturbing story on cnn.com last night about money being dirty, you know, actual dirt dirty. I remember being told this as a kid but what I didn't realize is how much of our money is contaminated with cocaine (literally, although figuratively it's probably a higher percentage than anyone wants to admit) as well as disease-causing germs.

The amount of bills estimated to be contaminated by cocaine? 90% !

Here's an excerpt from the story:

In the course of its average 20 months in circulation, U.S. currency gets whisked into ATMs, clutched, touched and traded perhaps thousands of times at coffee shops, convenience stores and newsstands. And every touch to every bill brings specks of dirt, food, germs or even drug residue.

Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine...

Money can be contaminated with cocaine during drug deals or if a user snorts with a bill. But not all bills are involved in drug use; they can get contaminated inside currency-counting machines at the bank.

"When the machine gets contaminated, it transfers the cocaine to the other bank notes," Zuo said...

Zuo, who spoke about his research at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society on Sunday, found that $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills were more likely to be positive for cocaine than $1 bills...

For years, health agencies have advised people to wash their hands after touching cash for sanitary reasons. Disease-causing organisms such as staphylococcus aureus and pneumonia-causing bacteria have been detected in paper bills. According to a 2002 study published in the Southern Medical Journal, 94 percent of the tested bills had potentially disease-causing organisms...

Although the contaminated bills do not affect health, Negrusz said, they could cause in a false positive drug test if a person, such as a law enforcement officer or banker, handles contaminated currency repeatedly.

"Imagine a bank teller who's working with cash-counting machine in the basement of the bank," Negrusz said. "Many of those bills, over 90 percent, are contaminated with cocaine. There is cocaine dust around the machines. These bank tellers breathe in cocaine. Cocaine gets into system, and you can test positive for cocaine. ... That's what's behind this whole thing that triggered testing money for drugs."

You can bet I'll be taking more care to wash my hands after handling bills... and making sure my kids do the same.

But a small part of me has to wonder if this is just another reason the credit card companies have devised to encourage us to use their plastic instead?