To worry about the germs that might come with a library book?

[ASnowballsChance]

I think I suffer from health anxiety and now it's spreading to worrying about things that have never crossed my mind until now.....

We are big readers and to keep up with the amount DC read we regularly borrow from the library but now I'm freaking out about all the germs and creepy crawlies (bed bugs mainly) that we might be bringing into our home.

AIBU to never want to borrow a library book again?!

Germs are good for the immune system

I feel really sorry for everyone whose health/germs anxiety is affecting their daily life. It must be rotten There's some stuff on this thread that makes me feel really sad. Library books not allowed in living rooms and bedrooms? How do they get read?

The cleanliness of library books honestly would never have occurred to me before this thread (and still wouldn't if I'm honest). I definitely don't think it's a 'normal' concern!

My MIL is like this. Absolute clean freak. Terrified of ‘germs’. Always has been. My husband was diagnosed with a serious auto immune disease in his 20s, and he catches every little virus going. I’m convinced there’s a link.

I have autoimmune diseases and have to be careful .
I had one dreadful incident recently. I knew I had been v careful with diet and hygiene.
When I spoke to my gp as soon as I was able he said I was just unfortunate. I could have touched anything literally.
You can only do so much. At least bed bugs only leave a few marks. I was left very ill in a public loo for hours.
Speak to your gp and take all the help You get.
You could wipe the covers with wipes possibly .

Give them a spray if it makes you feel better and forget about it. I worry about the ice cream vendors who take money and hold your cone and flakes with their fingers!!! DH thinks I'm a fuss pot.

Sensible precautions to take are washing hands PROPERLY after using the toilet and before eating. Everything else is part of living.

Just the feel of them makes me feel a bit weird. And the smell of library books. The kids section just feels and smells grimy with odd stains.

Thankfully my child also hates books that are damaged and dirty so we don’t have a problem.

glue oh yes you do!

I've worried about this too. Books being read in toilets, no hand washing.

The class bear was always washed when it visited.

Garden and allotment dirt doesn't bother me. But over peoples bad hygiene does.

I bet you get ill a lot

I’m also one of those who won’t eat cakes made by people at work! It’s not like I have super high standards of cleanliness but some things just put me off.

If you feel like that I strongly suggest you don't eat any cakes. I've known people who worked in cake factories and they won't eat any shop bought cakes.

My maternal grandmother always used to say that "you've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die" and my mother was much the same. She'd been in the Navy before marrying and continued to travel after marrying. My brother was born in what was then Persia and I was taken out to the Arabian Gulf at 3 months old. We were brought up with sensible rules about hand washing and washing uncooked foodstuffs but she didn't turn a hair when I pulled carrots from the garden and ate them raw after roughly washing the dirt off under the garden tap.

What she did notice that the European children who all had similar upbringings to us were normally healthy and strong with only the usual childhood problems. However, the US children from the oil companies who had everything in sight disinfected and only ate food flown in from the USA were always pale and ill because they had almost no immunity, particularly to the local bugs.

I'm much the same. I only use hand sanitiser after washing my hands after picking up the dog poo or after blowing my nose at work to avoid spreading colds etc as much as possible.

I used to work in a library. Any particularly grubby books coming back in used to get cleaned with a splash of dettol before they were put back on the shelves.

HTH

OP, please don’t worry about library books. It was a very special treat for the staff to have an hour a day spent cleaning books with meths. Not every book that was returned just the more gross ones. It was strangely therapeutic and I quite enjoyed it. If you feel the books in your local library are soiled and rank do bring to the librarian’s attention. They will be very happy to reassure you as are many of the PPs.

You need to see your GP.

Germs are everywhere. To a certain extent, they're not worth worrying about.
I highly doubt anyone is over concerned about germs on all their wads of cash, are they.

I can’t help visualising someone sitting on the toilet and reading a book which someone else has read. Before you ask I don’t do that but i have heard others mention it casually. If I read in the toilet it is always a magazine I am going to dispose of.

I always wash my hands before eating lunch at work. It surprises me how many people walk straight in and pick uo their food with their hands without washing.
I aways wash my hands as soon as I get home from anywhere too,.Am I weird?

Thanks Sarah. I'm rarely ill so hope that helps! I work in a primary school so you can imagine the things my hands encounter!

I read once that really we ought to wash our hands before (and after) we go to the loo as your hands are much dirtier than your genitals - you’re more likely to put something nasty on your bits from your hands than vice versa. Anyway, I don’t do this and am very much of the ‘meh’ school of germ awareness. Obv within reason, I’m not cavalier about it.

I'm a medievalist so our plague may be slightly different from yours, but I've certainly handled plague-era books and been assured it really couldn't be an issue.

It was all bubonic plague, from the Black Death in 1348-50 to the last major epidemic in 1665-66.

My one night of feeling like I was going down with flu might have had nothing to do with the documents I'd been looking at, but it did seem a bit coincidental.

I always wash my hands thoroughly after handling documents, but that's just because some of them are very grimy. I don't think one could do historical research if one was afraid of dirt and germs!

pingu I don't tend to touch my genitals when I visit the loo but I guess for men it makes sense.

Surely you put your book or magazine down when you meet to wipe in the loo and then pick it up once you've washed your hands? In which case, it's not being touched by dirty hands. And if you put the lid down before flushing, you're not getting a plume of germs over everything.