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Finally, an e-mail from Asia reaches me about a product I have never heard of before: a »money sterilizer«.

No, seriously. »Dirty« money can be found not only in offshore bank accounts or under a pillow, but every day in your very own wallet. The e-mail I mentioned claims that 36,000 Americans die every year from flu-related illnesses. 10% of them have acquired the virus through contact with banknotes. Supported by a study by the »Center for Disease Control and Prevention«. Without me being able to or wanting to check it out now.

Apparently, an American university has also taken a sample and detected more than 3,000 different types of bacteria on one-dollar bills. A European university found 6,000 varieties.

The solution is to treat the money with a plasma ion cluster (whatever that is) and a HEPA filter during the automatic counting process. It only takes 20-30 seconds. In order to then get the clean money into circulation, I suggest that all cashiers should always wear disposable gloves (using new ones for each transaction, because they are also accepting »dirty money«), and the cash drawers should also be cleaned regularly.

Although, perhaps simple contactless payment is a better recommendation instead.

If you are not contactless, but have the appropriate contacts, please make the EU Commission aware of this issue. Either we will do huge business, because we will sell these devices millions of times over, or, because cash would be banned for health reasons, all payment transactions must be converted to cashless - that too is a nice deal. The task of abolishing cash would no longer be handled by the Ministry of Finance, but by the Ministry of Health. Interesting.