Let’s imagine that you are about to eat a cookie that has been touched and handled by over a thousand (yes, a thousand) different hands. Or, you just found out that the hotel where you stayed last night used the same sheets for over 100 guests.

That’s pretty much the story of our paper money, especially with the dollars bills. Here are some facts about our paper money: According to Federal Reserve, to sustain $2.3 trillion in cash that circulates in America, 55 billion paper money bills, of various denominations, are currently in use. Of the total cash amount, 12 billion dollars are in “singles.” A typical single dollar, with 6.6 years of average life expectancy, is touched and handled by 110 people on average a year, presumably with both hands, meaning a total of 1,452 different hands among absolute strangers touching and handling it during its life span (6.6 x 220 = 1,452).

Health authorities are unequivocal about how dirty our paper money is and say it harbors a variety of microorganisms and pathogens, making it a critical vector for the spread of germs that can transport a live flu virus for up to 17 days. Paper money can reportedly carry more germs than a household toilet.

Money is the most common medium in American society that goes through many different hands for many years. Yet, deeply in love with money, we never think about how dirty money really is. It is one object we would never throw away for being contaminated even if it fell into the soiled toilet, perfectly willing to wash it for reuse. But, we easily trash even slightly outdated food if suspected of health hazard —but never with money, which, according to our common lore in America, can never be too dirty. Indeed, which American would throw away money only because it carries a lot of germs or smells revolting?

People, who would never accept the aforementioned cookie or a night at a hotel with publicly used sheets, gladly welcome such heavily polluted money. On special occasions, some people even kiss the bills upon acquiring them, as affectionately as they kiss their loved ones.

Our peculiar indifference to basic hygiene with money is quite baffling. Among all advanced nations, America is considered the most germ-fearing of them all. We are so germ-conscious that we feel compelled to wash our hands after browsing at a Walmart or a Barnes & Noble. If you travel by air, you notice the meticulous way each individual food item is wrapped with utmost hygienic factors in mind before it is served to passengers. If an item is even slightly mishandled, it goes instantly into trash. At bakeries and delis, we never use bare hands to pick up cookies or croissants from their trays, and eyes are everywhere watching everybody.

The only exceptions we grant for slack hygiene are the social misfits like hippies who might willingly share their “joints,” drinking glasses and (possibly) toothbrushes with one another. After all, they are hippies.

For normal Americans, drinking glasses are shared only among close family members or intimate lovers. We regularly warn our children not to share things with strangers, or even friends. If an item is used by everybody, like the shoes or balls at a bowling alley, the law requires a strict sterilization after each use.

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Almost neurotic about personal hygiene and paranoid with public health, we throw away many things after one use (welcome to our “throwaway society”). Only foreigners, and Catholics, with their strange trust in humanity, allow themselves to share food (or wine) from the same container. After “ugly,” “dirty” is perhaps the most unwelcome word in America.

Given such phobia about sharing things with each other in America, we wonder why no government mandate exists regarding regular “money cleansing” whereby paper bills, especially singles, are vigorously sterilized at necessary intervals. We certainly expect restaurants to wash their plates and utensils or hotels to change their sheets after each use. Just imagine the fork you used at a restaurant was also used by 110 other eaters without washing! But concerning the dangers that our dollar bills pose on our health, nothing is heard either from governments or civil watchdogs as if mentioning “dirty money” would cause our next recession.

Even during the height of COVID, we were urged to wear masks to avoid the germs, but we were never told of the dangers that exchanging unclean money posed on our health. Given its critical function, the business of “money laundering” should be legalized to serve our dirty-money rampant society.

What explains our otherwise germ-o-phobic nation to be so indifferent toward potential money-borne diseases, exempting money from our normal fear of the human contagion? Perhaps we believe that the American dollar is so sacred and holy that its cleanliness is divinely guaranteed and we are protected from its contamination by the capitalist angels and guardians. Even if its unsanitary handling causes illnesses among adults and deaths among children, we say, so be it. In our relativistic society, where everything else is doubted, money gets our absolute, unconditional assurance of its specialness.

Bank tellers suffer noticeably, as their occupation is considered a “high-stress” job; its turnover rate at 30 percent is higher than other occupations. Perhaps having to handle paper bills all day explains their rather short careers? After all, their job is tantamount to sharing their “toothbrushes” with hundreds of strangers every day. Few wear rubber gloves, perhaps not to alarm us with the truth that money is a very dirty thing.

That’s a lot of stress.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.