With this year’s SBL in San Francisco (home of the anti-circumcision party among others) participants and attendees need to know that BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, is infested- with bacteria.
Carrie Nee prefers to stand during her half-hour commute on BART from San Leandro to downtown San Francisco. Although the trains’ blue fabric seats are plush and comfortable, Ms. Nee refuses to sit on them. “I would love to sit down, but it just grosses me out. They’re disgusting,” said Ms. Nee, a 26-year-old records clerk. Riders on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system have long complained about germs in the hard-to-clean cloth seats. As Bob Franklin, the BART board president, acknowledged, “People don’t know what’s in there.” Now they do. The Bay Citizen commissioned Darleen Franklin, a supervisor at San Francisco State University’s biology lab, to analyze the bacterial content of a random BART seat. The results may make you want to stand during your trip. Fecal and skin-borne bacteria resistant to antibiotics were found in a seat on a train headed from Daly City to Dublin/Pleasanton. Further testing on the skin-borne bacteria showed characteristics of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the drug-resistant bacterium that causes potentially lethal infections, although Ms. Franklin cautioned that the MRSA findings were preliminary. High concentrations of at least nine bacteria strains and several types of mold were found on the seat. Even after Ms. Franklin cleaned the cushion with an alcohol wipe, potentially harmful bacteria were found growing in the fabric.
Gross. If I had to guess, I’d guess the anti-circumcision party was mostly responsible what with all their bacteria infested frontals and posteriors.
Anyway, let others sit on BART. You stand. Via Joe Zias.
Zwinglius Redivivus 