In honor of NYU’s Dirty Money Project, I’m posting a few particularly germ-laden paragraphs from The End of Money:
In the science-fiction novel The
White Plague by Dune author Frank Herbert, a molecular biologist decides to
exact revenge for his family’s murder by poisoning paper money and distributing
it in countries where the bad guys in the story live. The contamination spreads
out of control and becomes a global plague. At one point, the U.S. president
declares: “We’ve decontaminated and replaced the money to the point where we can
start lifting the quarantine on the banks.” Unfortunately, the plan falters.
Banknotes and coins harbor all kinds
of bugs.2 Traces of the bacteria staphylococcus
have been detected on 94 percent of all U.S. dollar bills. In 2003, hysteria
in China that banknotes could spread the SARS virus proved to be unfounded, but
the Bank of China still decided that any bills it received would be held for
twenty-four hours—the estimated lifespan of the virus—before being released
back into the ocean of circulation. And Swiss researchers have found that
moderate concentrations of flu virus could survive on banknotes for up to three
days. When they tested the same bugs “in the presence of respiratory mucus,”
which sounds like a really fun experiment, they determined that the virus lived
for up to seventeen days. “The unexpected stability of influenza virus in this nonbiological environment,”
wrote the scientists, “suggests that unusual environmental contamination should
be considered in the setting of pandemic preparedness.” Could circulating
banknotes help spread a
future plague?
When I forwarded that study to a
friend at the Centers for Disease Control, she was unimpressed. “Are the
researchers sucking on banknotes or inserting them in their noses?” she asked.
Without a perfect storm of transmission conditions—someone sneezes on a
banknote, doesn’t allow it to dry, stores it someplace dark and humid, doesn’t
rub it on other material like a leather wallet or pants pocket—maybe, and only
maybe, enough viral particles could survive to infect the next person handling
those bills. Unless people start using greenbacks as handkerchiefs, she told
me, whatever germs do reside on cash or coins should die a quick death.*5 That was
reassuring, yet a friend who recently returned from Africa was kind enough to
inform me that people in some of the more dangerous parts of the continent
store cash in their underwear. As smart as my contact at the CDC might be, I
suspect that when assuring me of cash’s harmlessness, not even she was thinking
of banknotes stored in skivvies.
