When you go to a grocery store or a big box store like Target or Walmart, most likely the first thing you do when you get to the store is to grab a shopping cart. Unless you’re only there to pick up one or two items, a shopping cart is the easiest way to collect everything on your list.

You probably don’t think much about the shopping cart you choose. Perhaps you check to see if the wheels are squeaky or not before pushing the cart through the store. Perhaps you use a sanitizing wipe to wipe off the handle bar, but other than that, you probably don’t look at the cart too much or consider the cart itself to be dangerous.

It turns out that there is a fairly widespread but little known danger lurking in some shopping carts. Multiple incidents have been reported at Walmart, enough that the retailer admits that workers check the shopping carts for this danger. Yet, most customers are not aware of what they should be looking for.

Next time you go to a store with a shopping cart, take a close look at the handle bar before you grab onto it. Check to make sure there isn’t a razor blade sticking out of the handle bar. That’s right – multiple cases have been reported of razor blades sticking out of handle bars.

Most times the razor blades are pointed blade side up, hidden in the handle bar, but you could still get cut, like Mel Johnson did when pushing an abandoned shopping cart out of an aisle. Johnson explains that even though the blade was upside down with the sharp part wedged inside the cart handle, he still got cut.

Michelle Patterson tells a similar story. She was wiping off the shopping cart handle with a disinfecting wipe when she was cut by a razor blade sticking out of the cart handle. It cut her, and she had to go to the doctor. Watch the video below to hear Patterson’s story and to hear what the police had to say about why so many razor blades are left in shopping carts.

Not everyone thinks that the razor blades left in shopping carts are simply left by shoplifters. Watch the video below to hear about another similar incident and what the police have to say about the potential reason a razor blade might be left in a shopping cart.

Have you ever found a razor blade in a shopping cart? Are you going take a closer look at the shopping cart handle the next time you go shopping? Do you think the razor blades are left there by shoplifters, or do you think they are left there for another reason?