Shopping carts are festering hotbeds of germs and disease, or so one would think seeing the expense Chevy Chase Supermarket has put into installing shopping car washing machines in their store.
The fancy new machine sprays down every cart in the store between uses with a peroxide solution that kills 99.9% of germs, leaving them clean enough to allow your baby to gum all over the handlebar. The carts dry after a few seconds, leaving them ready to use almost instantly after being cleaned.
"It kills all the nasty stuff, salmonella, staph, E. coli," said Bob Schwei, a technician with PureCart Systems, the Wisconsin-based manufacturer of the glossy white machine, which looks like an airport X-ray machine. "They're very popular in Korea — bird flu."
I wonder if the machine works on people? Seems more convenient than a shower. [Washington Post via Book of Joe]
DISCUSSION
I don't really see the need for this, other than to calm fears of disease. What I'm more concerned about is the possibility that devices such as this would create superbugs, resistant to all kinds of anti-microbials. I still think that UV baths should take care of this, and there wouldn't be any chance for bugs to develop resistance.