THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US...

The other day I loaded up the internet and the homepage came up with the standard variety of articles and stories to attract my attention and then I read this line, “Your barbeque grill may have more germs than a toilet seat!” so says the United Kingdom’s hygiene expert Dr. Lisa Ackerley whose research found the typical outdoor grill contains a staggering 1.7 million microbes per 100 cm sq as compared to the average toilet seat’s 759,950 microbes per 100 cm sq.

I don’t know about you but I can’t even remember the last time I had our toilet seats’ microbe population checked, but, okay, we’ll go with her number. The article also goes on to state the obvious by listing how carpets, computer keyboards, cell phones, kitchen sinks and dishcloths are also breeding grounds for germs. Ya think? Is this news? They forgot to mention door knobs, shopping cart handles, coffee cups, money, steering wheels, credit cards, baseball bats, used gum…

I don’t mean to be all cynical and everything but the research was carried out for the household cleaning product company Jeyes Inc. who just happen to be the distributors of Jeyes Fluid Outdoor Disinfectant. How convenient.

Now, I’m not saying that this news isn’t a bit alarming but sometimes ignorance is bliss. I didn’t really need to know the microbe level of my toilet seat and I am fairly certain that after years and years of barbequing experience, and taking in to account how many people I have poisoned over the years, (that would be none, by the way), I think that I am perfectly qualified to clean my grill and I can say with a certain amount of confidence that, if tested, my grill will be cleaner than my toilet seat. Just saying. Now, maybe I’m a bit more diligent than the average griller but I’m thinking we’ve got some Chicken Littleing going on here.

It’s just one more alarming piece of information that we don’t really want or need.  I’m reminded of the “Eyewitness News” hidden camera pieces that tell us all about the disgusting things we can find on our hotel bedding and in the restaurant kitchens and in the meat market and in the local bakery. Stop it already. There are just some things that we really don’t need to know.

            Like how many different daily things we do and are exposed to that can lead to disease and death. It seems that every second email is a notice that we are being killed by our car’s air conditioner or some kind of venomous spider or Aspartame or your mumps vaccine or some such thing. Please go to the Snopes.com website to confirm any and all internet warnings before you go screaming down the street with the latest piece of news that we are all going to die from.

            So as we enter the peak grilling season make sure you clean your grill properly, and, while you're at it, maybe you ought to do an extra bit of scrubbing on your toilet seat, too. Just use a different brush.

            “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,”-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).