Mom gets HFM from a shopping cart, and a doctor reacts and drops some gross facts about germs

If you don’t already, you may want to start utilizing those Purell cart wipes they have at a lot of stores now. In response to a TikTok that shows a mother “putting her baby into a grocery cart for the first time” to then showing her experiencing a horrible case of hand foot and mouth disease (HFM), Dr. Sood drops some facts about germ spread and just how clean grocery carts actually are. (Spoiler alert: they aren’t clean. At all.)

Dr. Kunal Sood is an anesthesiologist with a TikTok that has more than 2 million followers. TikTok—and his Instagram— are where he shares medical advice, empathetic reaction videos to women in pain from IUD insertion, pain management advice, and funny clips about what it’s like being a single doctor in his 40s. And in this particular video, he reacts to a poor woman who caught HFM, where she shows bloody blisters and pustules all over her hands and mouth.

Dr. Sood said in reaction to the video that it is possible to pass an infection to someone else from a grocery cart, and went on to share some horrifying facts about how gross shopping carts actually are. 

“A study from the University of Arizona did show that over 75% of shopping carts were positive for fecal bacteria,” he shared. Fecal bacteria — AKA POOP.

He went on to say that the study showed that shopping carts were dirtier than toilets because toilets were cleaned more often than a shopping cart. 

“The best way to lower your risk of infection for both you and your kids is to use a disinfecting wipe and make sure you wipe the shopping cart handle,” Dr. Sood said. 

So next time you see that little box of wipes when grabbing your shopping cart, take advantage of them. And maybe even use hand sanitizer before, during, and after using the cart. And burn the skin off of your hands once you’ve touched it.