Can You Forestall Choosing Up Germs on the Subway?

Benjamin Norman for The New York Occasions
Q. I take mass transit each day. Would sporting a glove (or holding one thing) to create a barrier between me and the chrome steel I seize onto daily be efficient at decreasing the potential for selecting up germs?
A. Sure, utilizing some sort of barrier to keep away from getting germs in your palms will assist forestall germ transmission, researchers say. However it’s not clear that such safety will actually make a lot distinction.
Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology on the Mailman Faculty of Public Well being at Columbia College, would really like somebody to invent what he’s dubbed the “subway condom” — one thing you can slip over your hand to guard towards germs. Dr. Lipkin, who has researched the germs in New York Metropolis, all the time makes use of a glove or different bodily barrier when he grasps transit poles.
“There are all types of micro organism and viruses that sit on surfaces,” he stated. He notes that outside surfaces, like mailbox handles, are sterilized by the solar’s UV rays, however there isn’t any such pure safety deep underground.
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In need of a subway condom, Dr. Lipkin suggests that folks wash their arms as quickly as attainable after touching such public surfaces, and hold their palms away from their eyes or mouth within the meantime. He stated he’s additionally resorted to wrapping his elbow round poles, as an alternative of his arms, as a result of he’s much less more likely to infect himself from his elbow.
Curtis Huttenhower, a computational biologist on the Harvard T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being, agrees with Dr. Lipkin’s recommendation however doesn’t fear a lot himself about choosing up germs from public…