Equip Them Now

As a result of the over-use of anti-bacterial soaps, cleansers, and prescription antibiotics, new strains of antibiotic-resistant infections are popping up. A particularly nasty one is MRSA, which is a strain of Staph skin bacteria. More about it here. It is usually contracted in the hospital, but more and more it's being contracted via sports, both skin contact and equipment. Pretty scary stuff. I used to work in pharmacy, and I remember people coming in multiple times trying to battle a rough case of Staph. [I'd leave the paper on the counter until they left, then use our tweezers to pick it up. A pharmacy etiquette tip: Please have the doctor phone or fax in your prescriptions if you have something contagious. Nothing made me feel squickier than a parent letting their little kid with pinkeye hand over their prescription, rubbing their eyes along the way. Or *cough cough while holding paper to mouth* "How long to fill my prescription?"]

One way to help control and prevent the spread of MRSA amongst otherwise-healthy people (ie: those not catching it from a hospital) is to disinfect your sports equipment. StopMRSAnow.org is also teaming up with swapmesports,com in a campaign to collect disinfected used sports equipment in the Equip Them Now campaign. 

Collect. Disinfect. Donate.

You can gather up your outgrown/unused sports equipment, disinfect it with a solution of 3/4 c bleach per 1 gallon water, and donate it (or swap/resell yourself somewhere.) It would also be a good idea to do this with any used equipment you acquire, before using it!

Here's some other great tips on keeping some of the (surprisingly!) dirtiest areas in your home safer.

This issue was brought to my attention as a member of the One2One blogger network.