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Assessment of bacterial contamination of paper currency notes in Bangladesh

Muhammad Ali Akond, Saidul Alam, Fatema Tuz Zohora, Mahmuda Mutahara, Rashed Noor, Momena Shirin

Handling of paper currency notes might be a regular means of exposure to microbiological contamination. To assess the extent of bacterial contamination of Bangladeshi paper currency notes (known as Taka) in circulation, a total of 540 notes of three denominations (2, 10 and 100) were collected from different occupational groups and were subjected to bacteriological analysis. Among the notes examined, 506 (93.70%) were found to be contaminated with 5 different bacterial isolates. The load of Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Vibrio spp., Pseudomonas spp. and Staphylococcus spp. ranged between 0 to 2.49×108 cfu/cm2, 0 to 1.50×108 cfu/ cm2, 7.7×107 to 1.59×109 cfu/cm2, 4.5×107 to 8.24 ×108 cfu/cm2and 3.6×107 to 1.32 ×107 cfu/cm2, respectively.Furthermore, 200 bacterial isolateswere tested for their resistance against 10 commonly used antibiotics and 20-86% Salmonella, 8-96% Vibrio, 16-82% Pseudomonas and 18-82% Staphylococcus isolates were found to be resistant against at least one of the antibiotics tested. Thus, the present study revealed that most of the currency notes were contaminated with a huge range of bacteria including the antibiotic-resistant ones which might pose a severe public health risk.