I hate to break it to you, but you're in contact with E. coli all the time. Years ago here in Los Angeles, the local CBS affiliate went undercover in restaurants here . It was a sensational expose, in which one commercial for the upcoming news segment looped a kitchen worker picking his nose over and over again. It showed vermin and pest infestation/droppings, lack of hot water in restaurant kitchens, restrooms without soap which kitchen help used. Fortunately, this led to restaurants in Southern California having to operate under a letter grade system upon inspection by the health department.
Not content with grossing people out with the restaurant expose (which in fact caused some of those nasty restaurants to close), the news station then did cotton swabs of Socal ATMs, phone booth key pads, etc. What did they find? E coli. And research has shown that shopping cart handles are dirtier than your toilet seat.
What is E. coli? From Wikipedia:
fecal–oral transmission is the major route through which pathogenic strains of the bacterium cause disease. Cells are able to survive outside the body for a limited amount of time, which makes them potential indicator organisms to test environmental samples for fecal contamination. A growing body of research, though, has examined environmentally persistent E. coli which can survive for extended periods outside of a host
As a result of this, and seeing one too many co-workers, gym attendees, and other public restroom users come out of a toilet stall without washing their hands, I no longer shake hands, but do the bump fist instead. I have no idea whether someone has had the common decency to wash.
By the way, very recent research has shown the folding seat tray and seat arms in an airplane are dirtier than the airplane toilet because they aren't cleaned, unlike the toilet. Take your sanitizing wipes.
