How Dirty Is Your Money And Credit Cards
From coins and cash to credit and debit cards, just how dirty is our money?
When you think about all the places your cash and cards have been and all the people who’ve touched them, you’ll quickly realize that our money is a transport vessel for all things infectious.
To find out truly how dirty money can be, we’ve put to use our very own ATP Luminometer, a device that measures bacteria in something called relative light units or RLU for short.
An RLU reading of less than 30 means that the surface is not likely to have pathogenic activity on that surface. A reading of 30 or greater, means that the probability of something harmful being on that surface is high.
We found that the average payment card had an RLU germ score of 284
On average, credit cards tended to be dirtier than debit cards.
On the flip side, cash turned out to be cleaner with an average RLU score of 180.
$100 dollar bills tended to be cleaner than $5 dollar bills by 65%
Coins were pretty disgusting also. Dimes were the dirtiest coin while quarters were the cleanest. But, how clean is the average coin you ask? Coins averaged 130 RLU’s.
To help you better understand the average publicly handled touch-points in a third party NYC test, check out these comparisons.
So, what is a safe level of RLU’s. Well, depending on the surface, the recommendation for food establishments is set at 10 RLUs or less. 30 is the maximum allowable and it comes with a health department fail.
There are ways for you to protect yourself while you are out and about touching grocery cart handles, railings, elevator buttons, door handles and the list goes on.
If you sanitize a surface then make sure you repopulate it with a good bacteria to fend off the oncoming bad bacteria.
Good bacteria are called probiotics and sustained external probiotics is a relatively new science.
External probiotic products are sweeping the world but only as fast as the education gets out there and understood by people.
There is an external probiotic solution for every external need from allergies to skin issues and beauty to work realted hygiene and pet care.
External probiotics is growing in popularity in the commercial space too, such as medical facilities and schools.
Stay safe and healthy.