Prevalence of Bacterial and fungal pathogens on Currency notes in two selected sites in Osun State Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract Currency notes happens to be the most handled substance in the world as it is prove of value. Humans unavoidably come into contact with cash in their daily business activities, on the other hand microbes have shown to survive on paper currency notes for up to 3 days. This implies a pathogen in contact with currency notes can remain viable and cause infection in another person in contact with that same currency note within 72 hrs. However, the rate of exposure to pathogens via paper and polymer currencies has not been fully explored. Hence, this study was designed to reveal the prevalence of bacterial and fungal pathogens resulting from handling paper and polymer currency notes using a local and urban settlement in Nigeria as a case study. All Nigerian currencies recovered from these communities were sampled using an 8 x 7 factorial model. Fifty-six (56) samples were obtained from each communities. Results from this study showed that 67.9% of currency notes were contaminated with bacteria including; Klebisella spp., Staphylococcus spp, Pseudomonas spp., Escherichia coli, and Proteus mirabillis, while there were 39.3% fungal contamination (Apergillius and Candida spp). Furthermore, the paper currency notes (1000, 500, 200, 100) were mostly contaminated than the polymer notes (50, 20, 10, 5). These observed pathogenic contaminations were seen to be location dependent. The currencies from the rural community were more contaminated (76.8% bacteria, 53.6% fungal contamination) compared with those obtained from the urban settlement (58.9% bacteria, 26.8% fungal contamination). In addition, it was observed that the 100 naira notes are more contaminated compared with other denominations. In conclusion, this study revealed that one of the major route of pathogens exposure is via cash handling, and the rate of exposure in rural areas is higher than in the urban settlements. It also revealed that exposure via paper currencies is higher than polymer notes.