If you get your money from a Hitachi ATM machine in Japan, it will have been cleaned first, by being pressed between rollers hot enough to kill most bacteria.

And, how dirty is money, really? 

“ At random, two $20 bills, one $1 bill, and a quarter were plucked from circulation in New York and checked for germs by a microbiology lab.

Samples were taken from each note and coin by rubbing with a large, moistened cotton swab. Each sample was then stroked onto a small plastic plate containing jellylike agar enriched with blood and other nutrients. The plates were incubated at body temperature for 48 hours. They all grew grayish specks or circles, signaling small colonies of bacteria.

Five types of bacteria were identified: spherical coagulase-negative staphylococci and micrococci; the more rodlike diphtheroids; propionibacteria (a group that includes Propionibacterium acnes, the cause of acne in oily areas); and various species of bacilli. Small bills that get traded a lot are invariably the dirtiest. Our tired-looking single produced the most microbes–all five of the varieties identified. The quarter yielded the least: only two. “Anything that’s very hard and dry isn’t terribly hospitable to bacteria,” according to Joanne Bartkus, a microbiologist with the 3M Company. “And many metals have antibacterial activity,” she adds. “Often pennies come off sterile, presumably due to the copper.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n10_v19/ai_21145379/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1