Just dust it off - it'll be fine!

You must have heard of the "five second rule"?  This says that if you drop food on the floor and scoop it up within five seconds, it's still safe to eat.  It's not a rigid rule of course, because so much depends on the state of your floor, the type of flooring you have and the sort of food we're dealing with and certainly you would be well advised to throw it in the bin, or at least cut off the part that came in contact with the floor and chuck that away.  But research at Aston University in Birmingham has concluded that there is in fact a significant "time factor" in the transfer of bacteria from the floor to anything dropped on it. Surprisingly, they found that if you are going to drop food on the floor and pick it up and eat it, then carpet is the safest type of floor covering on which to do it.