Last Friday, PRX’s Jake Shapiro sent me an email that was making the public-radio rounds. In it, Dave Fender, an audio producer at Colorado Public Radio, had asked the H1N1 question every pubmedia reporter/producer wants to: what happens when someone sneezes on my mic?
So, the station has been having staff meetings about the flu and our “pandemic plan” to handle operations in case we all manage to go down at once. And the question came up about what we’re doing to keep our mics and other shared gear as sterile as possible. [...] I said I would put the word out to ask if anyone else out there is using anything or doing anything special to keep mic windscreens and control surfaces and such as sterile as possible?
Long-time indy radio producer Catherine Stifter — who also happens to be a lead instructor at the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS — fired back with an answer. She told me she got her information from WMI’s curriculum director.
This flu is known to be spread mostly by coughing and sneezing. Anyone with a fever should NOT be working a mic. Tell them to go home. 24 hours fever-free is the recommendation.
For equipment I use in teaching wilderness first aid courses, we are using alcohol wipes to sterilize CPR mannequins. Kills 99% of everything. Also frequent hand washing (doesn’t address the coughing/sneezing contamination, but is a very good practice ALL the time).
Alcohol wipes: probably better for your kit than a glob of hand sanitizer.