This is funny, Netflix under the microscope…literally…
Rent what you want, watch when you want, and exchange as often as you want. Idea is catching on. Netflix now boasts 11.1 million subscribers. That’s a lot of people, who may or may not be washing their hands as often as you’d like. We, literally, put Netflix under the microscope. We delivered six different sealed Netflix envelopes, with six different Netflix DVD’s inside to the pathology lab at the University of Texas Health Science Center of Tyler. For help with our experiment, we went to Dr. Richard Wallace who is board certified in infectious diseases. “My biggest concern for the DVD’s would be the community MRSA that people pick up,” he explained. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a potentially deadly bacteria that resists certain antibiotics. It starts with skin infections that can penetrate the body and spread to the bones, joints, and bloodstream. The infections cause about 20,000 deaths each year in the U.S.
You can tell this is one of those local news “shock” pieces, DEATH FROM WATCHING A MOVIE? STORY AT 11! So are they Netflix DVDs safe?
As for the disks themselves, Wallace said he found nothing that could potentially cause disease… “This doesn’t mean that they couldn’t pick up any bacteria here, or any bacteria that’s dangerous, we just didn’t see any,” he explained.
12 thoughts on “Netflix under the microscope…literally”
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the other day I wondered this exact thing!!! I’m glad someone tested it so I didn’t have too.
Since those darn cd’s and dvd’s spin sooooo fast I always just figured that the friction from the air and he laser would disinfect it all… right???
… then by all means, we must write a story about it. Sorry, I may just be crabby, but what’s the point here? I didn’t find a shark swimming in my toilet bowl today. Would Make be interested in writing an article about this also?
I don’t know if Make would publish an article of that nature, but if you’d subjected your toilet bowl to a large whallop of scientific scrutiny (and were looking for something that was actually feasible, like, say, deadly algae instead of sharks), and then determined it’s safe, I’d be interested.
The point here isn’t that Netflix dvd’s are probably safe from bacteria.
The interesting bit is that someone went and tested it and wrote an article detailing their method.
Not as detailed as I’d like, mind, but still interesting that someone thought to do it..
The disk gets less handling than the envelope and sleeve. I bet there’s more germs on them.
Someone should check the sexier titles for traces of sperm.
Well since we are so concerned about echanging DVD’s, we should also start to test our money; 11 million people use netflix… 300 million people in the US exchanging money…
This whole concern about bacteria is getting way out of hand. Why do you think we are resistant to most of the stuff in the first place? It’s because we have been exposed to it. This hysteria is leading to the overuse of antibiotics, which in turn leads to the amplification of deadly strains, as well as the inhibition of our friendly armor of bacteria on our skin. The more removed we are from our natural environment the more uninhabitable it will be.