Does the included google_base strip special characters?

I seem to already know this answer but looking for confirmation and maybe a solution....

In the google base feed file I don't see anything that strips special characters like ” and ®

The google_base.php file only seems to put out the description in exact format as in the database with this line:
$output .= '<description>' . $product['description'] . '</description>';

Is this correct or am I missing something? If right I guess I might take a stab at stripping those special characters.

Mike