 The reason food service workers are supposed to wear gloves is that they could potentially pick up an infection touching a public service like a doorknob or faucet and then transfer it to our food. Well, if touching common surfaces could contaminate your hands, what about money? Dirty money, an investigation into the hygiene status of some of the world's currencies as obtained from food outlets. A total of 1,280 banknotes were obtained from food outlets in 10 different countries, and their bacterial count was enumerated. Who had the most contaminated money? They looked at Australia, Burkina Faso in Africa, China, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Here's the graph. Note this is a log scale, so this is like 100-fold difference in bacterial contamination. Let's do the cleanest ones first. Which country has the most hygienic dollar? That's a hint, as only three of the countries use quote-unquote dollars, the United States and our winner, Australia. Along with runner-up New Zealand, the most contaminated belongs to China, though not all bacteria are the same. If you're just looking at E. coli, for example, as an indicator of fecal contamination, then looking at the white bar were number one, leading the world to 55% of our bills contaminated with E. coli. With Burkina Faso, the third least developed country in the world a close second. They recommend that the handling of food and money should be physically separated by employing different individuals to carry out one task each, or handling food only with a gloved hand and the money with the other hand, or if neither of these precautions can be effectively implemented, it is highly recommended that food service personnel practice proper hand washing procedures after handling money and before handling food.