Shopping Cart Wash Offered in War on Germs

Washington Post Staff Writer The Kirsch brothers want you to know: At Chevy Chase Supermarket, it is now safe to lick the shopping carts. Not that they recommend it, mind you, but as a co-owners, along with their dad, of the independent grocery store on Connecticut Avenue, Jason and Kevin Kirsch know how common it is for their littlest customers to treat cart handles like lollipops. Worse, they know how unnerved folks have become in recent years over alarmist reports that rank shopping carts, in terms of germs, right up there with public restroom toilet seats. . And so the brothers today installed what they say is the Washington area's first full-scale shopping cart wash, a push-through device that sprays a misty peroxide solution over each cart between every use. It dries in a few seconds, leaving behind a faint whiff of... [read full story]