NEXT time you go to a restaurant it might be worth inspecting the chef鈥檚 fingernails before you eat. If they鈥檙e long, you could take home something rather less pleasant than the memory of an evening of good company and fine food.
A study by Michael Doyle at the University of Georgia in Griffin and his colleagues has shown that even thorough washing doesn鈥檛 remove all the bugs from long or artificial nails. And Doyle says that鈥檚 where about 90 per cent of the bacteria on hands accumulate.
His team pushed minced beef contaminated with E. coli under the nails of volunteers. The subjects then washed their hands thoroughly and the researchers measured their cleaning success. As expected, a nail brush was more effective than washing alone, but even this got rid of fewer bugs from long and artificial nails compared with shorter ones, the researchers told the International Association for Food Protection in San Diego last week.
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The risk isn鈥檛 just theoretical. In 2000, a food-poisoning outbreak in Glynn County, Georgia, affected over 200 people. The source was eventually traced to a bakery, where an employee had inadvertently contaminated cake icing with a Norwalk-like gastroenteritis virus. Public health officers said her false nails harboured the bug. Doyle says his results reinforce the need for regulations to ensure that food and health workers keep their nails short.