Texas-based artist A.A. "Pablo" Solomon will never forget his microbiology course in college.
"The first thing our professor had us do was to smear a Petri dish with our fingers," Solomon says. "The next day all of our dishes had many organisms in it with one common bond - a red bacteria. Luckily, this bacteria was of a harmless variety that our professor had put on the classroom door and in other places. The purpose for the experiment was to show us to be careful. However, the lesson was clear: It's easy to spread germs."
Now Solomon and his wife, who are world-travelers, go by one rule - assume it's not clean.
"We wash our hands numerous times a day, and we carry hand wipes," he says. "We even take the lemon slices and re-clean our silverware and the rims of our drinking glasses at the restaurant. If a cafe looks dirty, we turn around and walk out."
Germs. The uninvited guest. The invisible menace. They are everywhere, even in places that look spotless. So how can you tell if something truly clean?
According to Joe Rubino, head microbiologist for Lysol, there are two types of clean. There is the visual clean when a surface looks clean but still feels slimy and rough. The other type of clean is when the surface looks clean and is smooth but has bacteria and viruses on it.
"There is no product out there that can truly free a surface of viruses," he says. "But the products can eliminate the germs to a safer level."
Whether you are cooking meat or changing a diaper, Rubino recommends being prepared beforehand and touching as few things as possible. "Be aware of what you touch, and go back to clean and sanitize what you did touch," he says.
Even after vigilantly cleaning and disinfecting the area, germs, like life, will still happen. "That clean surface will get re-contaminated from the bacteria in the air," Rubino says.
So don't worry about over-cleaning - it's impossible. As Rubino says, bacteria are not going to become extinct.
Remember to wash your hands with soap and water, or use hand sanitizer if they aren't immediately available. For hard surfaces, quickly extinguish germs with wipes or sprays (either work well) that promise to kill 99.9 percent of the germs.
While it is good to be exposed to germs over your lifetime to build up your immune system, you will get your share. "Having too few germs is the least of your worries," Solomon says. "Zap them from surfaces as fast as you can with anti-bacterial cleaners."
