Your ATM Machine may be Loaded With Different Types of Germs

ATM keypads integrate microbes from different sources, including the human microbiome, foods, and potentially novel environmental organisms adapted to air or surfaces.

Automated teller machine (ATM) keypads represent a specific and unexplored microhabitat for microbial communities. The ATM keypad may be loaded with bacteria from spoiled food to parasites that may also cause sexually transmitted disease (STDs), revealed researchers.

"Our results suggest that ATM keypads integrate microbes from different sources, including the human microbiome, foods, and potentially novel environmental organisms adapted to air or surfaces," said Jane Carlton, Professor at New York University, US.

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‘The Automated teller machine (ATM) keypad may be loaded with bacteria from spoiled food to parasites that may cause sexually transmitted disease.’

"DNA obtained from ATM keypads may therefore provide a record of both human behavior and environmental sources of microbes," Carlton added.

The researchers in June and July 2014 took swabs of keypads from 66 ATM machines from Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, in the US.

Specifically, the most common identified sources of microbes on the keypads were from household surfaces such as televisions, restrooms, kitchens and pillows, as well as from bony fish, mollusks and chicken.

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Residual DNA from a meal may remain on a person's hands and be transferred to the ATM keypad upon use, the researchers suggested.

ATM keypads located in laundromats and stores had the highest number of biomarkers with the most prominent being Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), which is usually found in decomposing plants or milk products.

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In other samples, the researchers observed the biomarker Xeromyces bisporus, which is associated with spoiled baked goods.

In addition, the team found a parasite typically seen in the gut of humans and other mammals, along with a species closely related to the human parasite Trichomonas vaginalis, which can potentially cause STD.

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However, there is no significant difference was found in the keypads from ATMs located outdoors versus indoors, the researcher noted, in the paper published in the journal 'mSphere.'

Source-IANS