With door handles, etc, do you fear direct contact with all places used by the public?

At least once a day, (she) feels the itch.

The 30-year-old fashion publicist goes to the reception desk of her New York City office to accept a delivery of clothing samples from a designer. The courier hands over the garments, swings his messenger bag forward on his hip, fishes inside for a clipboard and hands her a pen. And then she feels it: a tickle at the back of her mind. A little rush of disquiet. Oh, my God, she thinks. Where has that pen been?

She imagines the possibilities: tucked behind the courier’s ear. Clutched by a stranger’s hand, which that day had probably touched a bathroom door or a subway handrail. She thinks about the millions of people in New York, eating, scratching, rubbing their noses, picking up bacteria and then leaving it on that handrail, and then on the person’s hands, and then on the courier’s pen, and then on her hand, her face, her lungs, her…. Ick.

(She) has always been germ-conscious—she wipes off her purse if it’s been resting on the floor and swabs her keyboard, phone and mouse with disinfecting wipes—but the pen problem pushes her over the edge every time. One day, on the way to work, she spotted her salvation in an office-supply store window: a pen made of antibacterial plastic. She bought a handful and now, whenever the messengers buzz for her, she carries one to the door. Her coworkers tease her. She ignores them. “I’m known in the office for being a little nutty about my pens,” she says, laughing but not apologizing. “If you take my pen, I’m coming after you.”

Admit it: You’ve got something in your own life that makes you go ick. Ask any group of women what they do to protect themselves from germs, and the stories will pour out: We open the bathroom door with elbows, punch the elevator buttons with knuckles, carry wet wipes to disinfect the ATM—and we wonder whether we’re going a little too far. Even the doctors we turn to for reassurance aren’t immune. “I’m extremely aware of the potential for being ‘contaminated,’ in and out of my office,” says Susan Biali, M.D., a 37-year-old physician in Vancouver, British Columbia. “I wouldn’t touch the magazines in the waiting room if you paid me!”

When Self.com polled readers about their germophobia, more than three quarters said they flush public toilets with their foot, and 63 percent avoid handrails on subways, buses and escalators—all unnecessary precautions, experts say. Almost 1 in 10 say they avoid shaking hands, behavior that may flirt with full-fledged obsession, when your efforts to sanitize your life begin to stymie your day-to-day functioning.



http://www.self.com/wellness/health/2009/02/the-truth-about-germs/