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Wrong. "A dropped item is immediately contaminated and can't really be sanitized," says Dr. Jorge Parada, medical director of the Infection Prevention and Control Program at Loyola University Health System. Any item that comes into contact with a surface picks up bacteria and dirt. How much bacteria and what kind of microbes it picks up depend on the type of object that is dropped and the surface on which it is dropped. "If you rinse off a dropped hot dog, you will probably greatly reduce the amount of contamination, but there will still be some amount of unwanted and potentially non-beneficial bacteria on that hot dog," warns Parada, who admits to having employed the five-second rule on occasion. "Maybe the dropped item only picks up 1,000 bacteria but typically the innoculum, or amount of bacteria that is needed for most people to actually get infected, is 10,000 bacteria," he adds. "Well, then the odds are that no harm will occur. But what if you have a more sensitive system or you pick up bacteria with a lower infectious dose? Then you are rolling the dice with your health or that of your loved one." Moms and dads, do you ever use your own mouth to "clean off" a dropped baby pacifier? "That is double dipping. You are exposing yourself to bacteria, and you are adding your own bacteria to what first contaminated the dropped item. No one is spared anything with this move," Parada insists. Still, there are degrees of risk of contamination. A potato chip that lands on a clean table is low risk, while a slice of cheese that lands on the floor carries a higher risk of contamination. The takeaway: The five-second rule should be replaced with this: When in doubt, throw it out. --From the Editors at Netscape |
When you drop that peanut butter sandwich on the kitchen floor or can't quite catch a slippery hot dog as it slides off the grill and onto the backyard patio, you have five seconds to pick up the food before it's contaminated, right?
