7/7/05
Hidden Hazards: Shopping Carts

When you go shopping and it's your turn to push a cart, do you ever wonder what others are leaving behind on the handle you grab? We begin a four week health investigation into the cleanliness of some things we come in contact with everyday, starting with shopping carts.

Stacy Edwards is a mom concerned about what she can't see on this shopping cart. "All these are going to be dirty and germy when you get them."Stacy worries about her kids being exposed to dangerous germs. "If the things were never cleaned you can get a build up of different organisms," she says.

Dr. Jane Kolmer Hamood is a microbiology research assistant professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. She says with the hundreds of hands touching these carts everyday, you never know what kind of germs you're being exposed to. "We never think about when we touch and rub our nose or pick something to eat or scratch your eye or whatever. It's surprising to find how many organisms there are," say Dr. Hamood.

With the help of Rita Yee, a specialist in microbiology at UMC, we tested the germs onshopping carts. We wanted to know if they posed a potential health risk for kids and parents using them everyday. So, armed with clinical swabs, we visited four local grocery and super stores: Albertson's, United, Target and Walmart.

We swabbed two carts at each store. After collecting the 8 samples, we took our swabs to the lab where the organisms we collected were incubated and allowed to grow. Just a couple of days later we went back to the lab to see what was growing. "Nothing really surprised me with what we found." said Rita Yee.

Some carts had more bacteria than others, so let's start with the dirtiest. Albertson's had two sets of carts that had quite a bit of bacteria...so much bacteria that further testing was required. "We actually did a gram stain of that yellow, dry colony and it just turned out to be a basicllus," said Rita. Basicllus is simply a natural bacteria found in our environment.

Coming in at a close second to being the dirtiest, the carts from Target and United. "Target had one that had a lot of bacteria," said Rita. A manager from Target tells us they clean the carts only when they look dirty. In that case, employees use an antibacterial cleaner. If the cart is soiled with an unidentifiable substance, we're told only then will they use a bleach and water mix. But fortunately, germs found on United's carts weren't as serious as they looked.

The carts with the least amount of growth were from Walmart. "These actually looked a lot cleaner than I thought they would to be honest," said Rita.

Tests showed the types of bacteria we collected were normal, often found on the skin and in our environment, but our specialist says even those bacteria can lead to sickness. "It's only if you had a wound and it got into your wound that it could cause infection," says Rita. To be safe, Rita suggests simply washing your hands regularly, especially after coming in contact with public shopping carts.

Or you can take extra precautions like Lubbock mom Angie Mountz does every time. "I take a Clorox wipe and wipe it down before we put [my son] in it."

Remember, the law does not require stores to have shopping cart cleaning policies. Next week Suleika tests the cleanliness of door handles at public restrooms.

We spoke with Eddie Owens with United Supermarket and he tell us shopping carts are cleaned professionally two to three times a year. Owens adds the store is looking into offering antibacterial wipes for customers using shopping carts.

Millions Of Bacteria Found On Metro Shopping Carts

Investigation Uncovers Contaminated Carts At Popular Metro Stores

POSTED: 5:13 pm CDT April 29, 2004

UPDATED: 11:11 pm CDT April 29, 2004

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OKLAHOMA CITY -- You touch them probably two or three times a week, but so do thousands of others. Shopping carts can carry thousands of germs, and Eyewitness News 5 recently investigated carts in the metro area to see which ones are the cleanest -- and which ones are potentially dangerous.

Video

Contaminated Carts - Part One

For two weeks Eyewitness News 5's Kevin Sims wiped down shopping carts at toy stores, grocery stores and shopping centers. The samples were carefully collected and sealed in bags, then analyzed by OK Labs scientist Dr. Walter Seideman.

Carts at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys-R-Us stores were tested for staph bacteria, which can lead to diarrhea, pneumonia and meningitis. At the Homeland and Buy-For-Less grocery stores, carts were also swabbed for salmonella -- a leading cause of food poisoning. Tests were also conducted for E.coli bacteria. All of the tests came back clean. But what didn’t show up in the tests is what could make shoppers and their families seriously ill. According to Seideman, some of the total bacteria counts were 1,000 times what humans would encounter in a normal day. At the Belle Isle Wal-Mart in Oklahoma City, two carts were put to the test. The handles and the seats on the carts were swabbed, each of which contained about 15 million bacteria. Seideman told Eyewitness News 5 just how dangerous those counts are for consumers. He said he would never eat a piece of bread with a bacteria count of more than 1,000. The numbers were higher at the Target store located at 50th Street and May Avenue. Two carts that were tested at the Target store registered 110 million and 128 million bacteria, respectively. Seideman said those figures should be alarming to shoppers. "That's very high," he said. "That means it's not been cleaned or sanitized for some time, and that's going to get on your hands." One parent who spoke to Eyewitness News 5 said she is concerned not only for herself, but also for her 13-month-old son. Jenny Schultz said that when she loads her son, Joseph, into a shopping cart, she uses a cart cover to protect him. "One of my concerns is that he'd put his mouth on it, and that would be extremely gross," she said. "But it's bad enough that he touches everything and then that goes in his mouth."

Video

Contaminated Carts - Part Two

Schultz’s decision to use a cart cover is wise -- because the numbers became only worse when Eyewitness News 5 visited the Toys-R-Us store near Memorial Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Seideman tested the baby seat in one of the store’s shopping carts. The test found 264 million bacteria on one sponge -- 249 million more than the seat on one of the carts tested at the Belle Isle Wal-Mart. Eyewitness News 5 also wondered how many germs were on Joseph Schultz’s toys. Seideman tested a sample from a toy phone that belongs to Joseph. Even though Joseph was sick at the time with a runny nose, the toy was relatively clean with only 600 bacteria. However, there is a solution to the high bacteria counts. An Eyewitness News 5 crew returned to the same Toys-R-Us store two weeks later to test another cart in the parking lot. The sample was returned to Seideman, who said the bacteria count came back much lower at 7,200. But when a store-bought anti-bacterial wipe was used on the cart, the high bacteria count quickly disappeared. "I think it would be a good idea to use these sanitary wipes," Seideman said. "It would be an easy solution to the problem at this point." The proof came later when Seideman tested his sample in his lab. According to Seideman’s lab tests, a simple, inexpensive cleansing wipe took a bacteria count in the thousands to almost zero -- in a matter of seconds.