03:11 PM PDT on Thursday, May 4, 2006

By TIM ROBINSON / KING5

Whether you look up, down or all around, they're out there. Germs.

The only place humans don't come into contact with germs or any bacteria is in the womb. But since none of us live there anymore, we wanted to look at some other spots around Seattle.

So we decided to go on a "germ journey."

Our quest started at Seattle Pacific University, where Dr. Derek Wood, a biologist and professor, gave us sterile swabs, water and agar plates, and told us how to collect our samples.

"Anything you touch to this that has bacteria on it, the bacteria will stick (on the agar) and they'll grow on it," said Dr. Wood.

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KING 5's Tim Robinson wipes a bacteria test swap on a petrie dish of agar as part of his collecting bacteria samples from objects used by people every day.

We hit the road and swabbed all over Seattle.

Here are the items we sampled:

•Water fountain

•A playground swing

•A kitchen sponge

•A mailbox handle

•A steering wheel

•A gas pump

•A newsroom telephone

•Underneath a toilet seat

•A toilet flush handle

•A bathroom door handle

•A cell phone

•A quarter and a dime

•An ATM machine.

And when we were all done testing, we took our agar plates back to Dr. Wood at SPU, where he put them in the incubator to see what would grow.

He knew we'd find a lot.

"Our bodies are coated with bacteria," said Dr. Wood. "And those bacteria are playing very important roles what they're doing is providing a protective shield to prevent bacteria that might be dangerous from growing and living on you."

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A bathroom sponge is wiped on to a petrie dish of agar as part of Tim Robinson's bacteria sampling on objects used by people every day.

Bacteria is everywhere. For example, the ATM.

We swabbed the ATM and then rubbed the swab onto a growing medium called an agar plate.

Dr. Wood put the agar plate into the incubator...and that let us see how much bacteria we'd collected from the cash machine.

"So when you see colonies on a plate...the small colored spots of different sizes, those are generally arisen from a single bacteria that you've pulled off of your environmental sample," said Dr. Wood.

The ATM's bacteria count was 144.

Compare that to the cell phone we tested, which turned up just five.

And this may be comforting to parents: the swing at the park we tested showed just five bacteria colonies, too.

On the other end of the scale, the sponge.

Sure, it's a kitchen workhorse...but it's more like a Trojan Horse. Because our test showed that there's a lot of hidden stuff going on inside that sponge. It registerd too many bacteria to count: in the 1000's.

The reason is because the sponge is wet and it's a great environment for bacteria to grow.

Juxtapose that with the very dry metal mailbox handle, which showed just 12 bacteria.

Or the steering wheel, which registered 5 bacteria.

We also tested some coins, and they registered just three bacteria.

The gas pump, with its hard rubber handle, showed seven bacteria.

Even somewhere with a nasty reputation -- the bathroom at KING 5 TV -- wasn't as bad as you might expect.

Underneath the toilet, we got 12 bacteria colonies. The toilet flush handle showed 22 and the door handle showed 31.

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Bacteria grows on a petrie dish of agar. The bacteria was collected by Tim Robinson as part of his testing of objects used by people every day.

"Most bacteria don't have any adverse affects whatsoever. Most bacteria," says Dr. Wood.

After the sponge, the second most bacteria were found on a newsroom telephone. But Dr. Wood says that's to be expected.

"A lot of those will be just off your skin, " he said, which is "normal."

When skin comes into contact with anything, oils are left behind and bacteria can grow pretty well there. So if you want to keep the phone, or any place else less bacteria prone, just keep it clean.

As for the kitchen sponge, Dr. Wood says he gets his really wet and microwaves it. A rule of thumb is to microwave until steam is seen coming from the sponge. Dr. Wood emphasizes it's the boiling water that kills the bacteria. Microwave power levels vary so use caution.

But Dr. Wood's most important advice to everyone is simple: wash your hands.

"Washing your hands is the number one most important thing you can do to reduce the spread of disease," he says.