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Breathe Better E-Newsletter>
An Allergist's Nightmare: The Micro-Poop Theory
May 9, 2008
One Western tradition that I find truly puzzling is the custom of wearing shoes inside the house. Although some of my non-Asian friends have banned shoes in their homes after they have children, I still find that a majority of Americans and Europeans continue to wear shoes inside their homes. Unlike Eastern cultures that consider this practice unsanitary, many Westerners don't think much of it even though this can be harmful for someone with allergies.
Leave Your Load Outside
As someone who specializes in treating nasal allergies, I cringe whenever I see dog poop on the sidewalk. Imagine that a beagle poops on the sidewalk in front of your apartment and the owner is negligent in cleaning up after the dog. You later walk home from work and as you approach the entrance of your apartment, you see the dog poop just in time to avoid stepping in it. You're disgusted that it's just sitting there and that the owner didn't have the common courtesy to clean up afterwards.
Let's say the next day the same dog poops again in the same spot and the owner doesn't clean up. The building superintendent happens to be watering the garden, notices the dog feces, and hoses it away towards the street into the gutter. You then walk by a few minutes later, and step in the area where the poop used to be, but you don’t notice this since it’s now covered in a thin layer of water. You walk through the lobby and up to your apartment.
Now this is where it starts to get really problematic. Many people assume walking over lobby carpeting or the door mat in front of your apartment would have wiped any residual poop particles off your shoe. But think about this: if you step in poop and take a towel and wipe it off vigorously, is it really off? Even if it's a wet towel, can you be truly certain that your shoes are truly free of all fecal matter?
This situation doesn't just apply to dog poop. This also applies to human phlegm, gum, dog urine, bird poop, chemicals, car oil, pollutants, bacteria and molds and whatever else you might find on the sidewalks of New York City at any time of the day. How many different kinds of germs or chemicals, organic or non-organic, are still stuck to the bottom of your shoe when you enter your apartment?
“Yes”, you say, “but I clean the floors all the time with disinfectant cleaning agents”. My answer to that is, "Yes, you can mop the floors every day, but you literally can't mop after every new footstep". Your carpet is like the towel that you originally used to wipe your shoes off with, only now you're living on it. Even worse, you let your 8 month old toddler crawl on your freshly mopped floor, not realizing that it's already been contaminated by your husband after he came home, bringing home his daily dog poop.
This is not even considering the amount of toxic chemicals found in most cleaning agents. Unless you put your shoes through a mini-shoe wash with soap and water before entering your apartment every time, it's impossible not to bring in microscopic pieces of contaminants into the apartment.
Go East And Tread Lightly
In Far Eastern cultures, it's customary to take off your shoes before you enter your home. You can either enter barefoot, with socks, and more commonly, using indoor slippers. Given this scenario, there’s less of a chance of the scenario mentioned previously. This is not to say that there aren’t any germs present already in your carpet or floors. However, in this case, you’re not adding an additional load of microscopic pieces of dog poop, urine, dirt, or spit inside your apartment.
In this age of paranoia about germs and flesh-eating bacteria, every other hand-soap is "anti-bacterial", and cleaning agents are measured by their 99.99% germ killing abilities. I can't help but to see this major disconnect, where we're obsessed about germ-free hands, but totally ignorant about the pseudomona riding on the soles of the shoes worn inside homes.
Disinfecting Versus Desensitization
One of the major theories about why there are so many people with allergies today is that as a society, we're using too many antibiotics, whether it's through prescription medications, anti-bacterial soaps, or even disinfectants. Because your immune system learns to differentiate itself from foreign substances by exposure, over time, chronic long-term exposure to dust or any other type of allergen, allows your body to learn that low levels of dust are tolerable. This is similar to what happens when you get allergy shots. It’s just another form of desensitization. What this means is that if you don't have a low level of exposure to common allergens or foreign substances, then your body thinks it's a brand new foreign material and initiates an allergic reaction.
However, the kind of bacteria that we introduce into our living room via our street contaminated shoes presents a much different scenario. In this situation, the type of contaminants on the soles of your shoes are not only “foreign” to most living spaces, they’re toxic.
Are We Allergyphobic?
I realize my micro-poop theory is a little far fetched, but this is only an extreme example of common situations that we as a society stress about too much. We probably don't need antibacterial hand-soaps. Regular soap is fine to remove dirt, viruses or bacteria. The amount of dog poop tracked into the apartment is probably too miniscule to cause any harm. But the thought of bringing in your poop-laden shoe into my house after a few wipes on the lobby carpeting is still a little unsettling.
I know there are people who have objections about going shoeless in the house. Floors can be cold, our feet look ugly, and sometimes our feet can smell. But let me leave you with the one thought: Would you prefer your toddler to be exposed to her father's foot sweat, or someone else's dog's poop?
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