Germs

November, for all the joy the presidential election brought, ended up being lost time for me. I spent much of it flat on my back with pneumonia.

Based on average incubation times, I figure the nasty little bacteria took up residence in my lungs on or about Halloween. A big reason for the lengthy recovery was that it wasn't until the second week that I stopped treating it as the flu, and got my hands on some serious antibiotics.

I spent the second week musing about how and where I picked up the bacteria. The odds were pretty low that it happened at home. Not that I'm a cleanfreak -- my partner used to be a surgical assistant and workplace OSHA supervisor. She set up some simple procedures around the house that allow us to easily avoid things like cross-contamination in the kitchen.



Able to focus on my world away from home, I narrowed my list of likely culprits to two: the office, and the bus to and from the office.

The Bus.

This is urban society's big mixing zone, which for some is one of the tertiary purposes of mass transit. People from different walks of life getting together in one equal place, all on the same level, rubbing elbows. Which is the problem! The handrails and seats can get filthy, and sometimes you have no choice but to touch them. We breathe on each other. And the high gas prices made everything worse, with more people and their germs packed onto rush hour coaches.

The Office.

I am not picking on transit. The workplace is just as big of a petri dish. Where I work we're all whale huggers and tree huggers. Chemicals are a no-no. In order to avoid using paper and plastic, we share the same cloth towels in the office kitchen, we wash (with the same sponge) coffee mugs instead of using paper cups, and we try to use regular plates and bowls. Communal spaces being what they are, the usual problems arise: dirty dishes pile up in the sink, and coffee pots don't get washed. For some reason, our cleaning service rarely cleans the sink and counters.

The restroom defies hygiene logic. The management installed one of those no-touch dispensers that spits out a paper towel when you wave your hand in front of its red eye. Only we still have to touch the flush handles, the water faucets and doorknobs.

Other than door handles, these are the primary vectors of infection in my life.

What's problematic is that taking transit and using less paper and plastic are behaviors we are supposed to be encouraging more of. I don't know about you, but I would rather not go through life rubbing my hands umpteen times a day with Purel. It doesn't sound like a way to live.

The challenge seems to be how environmental and sustainability advocates can overcome the reality that as a species we can't seem to help being dirty.

And I want to see some innovation. You know those self-cleaning windows? They use a photocatalytic coating to oxidize and loosen dirt. Why not something like that we can paint on handles and surfaces that will kill germs? Such passive technologies will be necessary as we move forward into an era of high-density living and fewer chemicals.

Let's hope by that time there will be universal single payer health insurance to take of all those future pneumonia sufferers.