I haven’t walked throughout Highland Park, but one neighborhood I know of really needs help. 

Highland Park is the 3rd wealthiest location in Texas per capita income. This pristine gem of a town has some of Dallas' most beautiful real estate, best schools… and filthiest sidewalks. If you go for a walk on parts of Beverly, Princeton or Sewanee for example, you better burn your shoes. The side walks are decorated with dog poop. What's up with that?

The problem isn’t "everyone." The real problem is misinformation on the subject of dog waste management. The bottom line: If you let your dogs poop on the sidewalk, guess what? Fecal organisms spread across the surface and then hitch a ride into your home on the soles of your shoes. That’s not personal opinion, but cold hard science.

My question for residents of Highland Park is, do we really want “filthiest sidewalks and most germ ridden home flooring” on the list of Highland Park attributes?

Here are the facts: A study released in April 2008 by Dr. Charles Gerba, microbiologist and professor at the University of Arizona investigated the role of shoes in the movement of bacteria from contaminated floor spaces to other surfaces. They found that when we walk upon a surface contaminated by fecal matter from dogs, bacteria adhere readily to shoes and hitch a ride into our homes.

Shockingly, they found that up to 99% of the bacteria traveled safely onto clean tile and carpets of kitchens, bedrooms and living areas. And if it's on the floor, it's on your feet and in your bed. Moreover, it’s on the hands and feet of any children in your home. Fact. Not fiction.

One gram of dog waste contains more than 20 million germs, bacteria, viruses, pathogens and parasites. And these disease agents remain alive and viable on the ground for years. Round worm eggs can remain viable for up to 3 years and maybe more.

In the University of Arizona study scientists gave volunteers a pair of clean new shoes and asked them to wear them for 2 weeks. At the end of that time, the shoes were taken to the lab for analysis. They found an average of 421,000 live bacteria on shoe soles. 27% was deadly E. Coli bacteria indicating frequent contact with fecal matter. Also detected was Klebsiella pneumonia, which can cause pneumonia and wound and bloodstream infections and Serratia ficaria, which can lead to infection of the respiratory tract. And as to the source, taking a walk on a poop-decorated sidewalk in Highland Park would do the trick.

Dr. Charles Gerba knows what he’s talking about. As a professor in the Departments of Soil, Water and Environmental Science (College of Agriculture), and Epidemiology and Biostatistics (College of Public Health) at the University of Arizona he knows germs. He obtained his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Miami, Florida and was a faculty member in the Department of Virology and Epidemiology at Baylor College of Medicine from 1974 to 1981. In short, Chuck Gerba is the real deal.

Yeah, who knew? To emphasize, this is new information that nobody understood. It takes time for people to find out about things. And cultures in general take quite some time to change their filthy old ways.  That is called “culture lag.”

To wit, have you ever heard the strange and tragic story of Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis? Semmelweis is known today as a pioneer of antiseptic medicine and the “savior of mothers.” In 1847, he found that the cause of Puerperal fever (or Childbed fever) was lack of cleanliness. In hospital maternity wards in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, the mortality rate for young mothers soared as high as 25%.

Semmelweis discovered the cure: forcing doctors to wash their hands. As a result, he was not only ignored, criticized and ridiculed, but dismissed from his position as director of Vienna’s largest maternity hospital. 14 years later he began speaking out in open letters, going so far as to tell his fellow doctors that by refusing to wash their hands, they were in fact committing murder. For all his trouble, Semmelweis was incarcerated in a mental asylum and murdered by guards.

Years after his death, the medical community finally discovered “oops, he was right” and by simply washing their hands saved thousands of innocent young lives. Today, Semmelweis’s portrait graces postage stamps and gold coins.

If it took society decades to accept the fact that doctors can save lives simply by washing their hands, it is likely to take time before some pet owners realize they are putting the health of neighbors, children and pets at risk by leaving dog waste on the ground.

Here’s the happy-ending part: If some residents of Highland Park don't want to clean up their act, Sgt Poopers will be happy to do the job. Our customers include residential, commercial and home-owner associations.

The moral of our story: Dog waste is a biohazard and a pollutant. If you don’t pick it up, your shoes will.