The "Dirtiest" Around Us

Do not get me wrong, it turns out the toilet is not only the dirtiest place in our home. The study mentions a number of household appliences and locations around the house we do not expect is more dirty than toilet.

Professor of Microbiology from the University of Arizona, Dr. Chuck Gerba, examine how the spread of disease in our neighborhood. The study includes household appliances and determine how many batteries were developed there. The main priority is to research the problem bacteria like E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus.

From the results of his study, he found that the average bacteria found on the toilet seat to reach 50 per square inch. "This is the cleanest thing you see can be related to micro-organisms," he said. But he added bacterial cleanser for the toilet seat is widely available.

According to Gerba, it seems we should be more concerned with other household appliances. "Usually there are about 200 more bacteria on our cutting board than the toilet seat," he said. In the kitchen it doesn’t necessarily get there through actual contact with faeces. It comes via raw meat products or the viscera from inside of the animal, where a lot of the faecal bacteria originate.

The kitchen sponge is 200,000 
dirtier than toilet seat. (Picture 
from: http://ourohio.org/)

"But you should treat our cutting board, like we doing on the toilet seat," he said. People more worried about the spread of bacteria through the toilet so often to clean it regularly, but often forgot the chopping block to be cleaned. In addition to cutting boards, appliances that contain a lot of bacteria in our homes is the kitchen sponge or dishcloth.

According to Gerba again, the sponge contains 10 million bacteria per square inch, and the millions of bacteria in the dishcloth. 

The dishcloth 20,000 dirtier 
than toilet seat. (Picture from:
 http://www.webstaurantstore.com/)

In other words, it turns out kitchen sponge is 200,000 dirtier than your toilet seat and a dishcloth 20,000 dirtier than a toilet seat. "Kitchen sponge so far has always been the most dirty," said John Oxford, professor of viralogi at the University of London and leader of The Hygiene Council - the international board that compares hygiene standards all over the world.

Its latest study examines samples from homes in nine different countries, and finds that 21% of “visibly clean” kitchen cloths actually have high levels of contamination. The cloths also fail the bacterial test which looks for E.coli.

The study identifies faecal bacteria in other places around the home, and this varies from one country to another. Saudi Arabia has the dirtiest fridges, with 95% of the fridges in the study failing the bacteriology test for E.coli. And in South Africa, the dirtiest item is the seal in the bath, with almost two-thirds with unsatisfactory levels of E.coli and 40% for mould. "It’s always a bit delicate which countries are the worst," says Oxford.

"We found that countries like Australia and particularly Canada are high up on the hygiene list… Countries near the bottom are fairly routinely, unfortunately, India and Malaysia." What about away from our homes? Gerba says the office is particularly bad. "Many people don’t realise they’re talking dirty every time they pick up their phone, because they never clean it. The average desktop has 400 times more bacteria than on a toilet seat."

Beware the supermarket too. "Shopping trolleys are really bad," warns Gerba. What’s more, about half of reusable shopping bags have faecal bacteria in them. "Some people have more faecal bacteria in their grocery bag than in their underwear, because they at least wash that."

So what does this actually mean for us in terms of health risks? "These numbers of bacteria, particularly for E.coli, are huge," says Oxford.

"E.coli is an indicator bacterium. It may not itself cause horrible disease, but it indicates faeces is around and that might contain other organisms like salmonella and shigella which really are virulently pathogenic." But we all touch these perhaps startlingly dirty things every day, and on the whole we don’t get constantly ill.

"We’re jolly lucky that as we’ve evolved over two million years, we have a whole set of genes whose only function is to get the immune system in action," says Oxford.

"All of us, in all these countries we have gone to, rely on Lady Luck too much, keeping our fingers crossed or sitting on our hands. In a modern scientific society, what we want is people to realise there’s a problem here and take action." *** [REUTERS | SRI | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 22112012]

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