The toilet seat has acquired an unfair reputation
as the dirtiest item in the average household. But
scientists say there are far filthier places in our
house, some of them where we least expect.
Would you chop your vegetables on your toilet
seat? I think pretty much all of us would say No.
But maybe we should think again, reports the
BBC.

Dr Chuck Gerba, professor of microbiology at the
University of Arizona, studies how diseases are
transferred through the environment. This
involves swabbing household items and
measuring how many bacteria - and what sort -
develop.
He particularly looks for faecal bacteria such as
E.coli and staphylococcus aureus.
His studies have found that on the average toilet
seat there are 50 bacteria per square inch.
"It's one of the cleanest things you'll run across
in terms of micro-organisms," he says. "It's our
gold standard - there are not many things
cleaner than a toilet seat when it comes to
germs."
We should be more worried about other
household items, it seems.
"Usually there are about 200 times more faecal
bacteria on the average cutting board than on a
toilet seat," he says.
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.

Chopping board

Would Gerba be more inclined to chop his
vegetables on a toilet seat then?
"It would seem a safer place," he says. "Not that
I would recommend it, but you might treat your
cutting board a bit more like you do your toilet
seat."
It's because we all fear the dirtiness of the toilet
seat so much that we regularly clean it, so
perhaps this is the course of action we need to
take with our chopping boards.
But the filthiest culprit in our homes is the
kitchen sponge or cloth.
According to Gerba, there are about 10 million
bacteria per square inch on a sponge, and a
million on a dishcloth.
In other words, a kitchen sponge is 200,000
times dirtier than a toilet seat, and a dishcloth is
20,000 times dirtier.
This is the same the world over.
"Always the dirtiest thing by far is the kitchen
sponge," says John Oxford, professor of virology
at the University of London and chair of the
Hygiene Council - an international body that
compares hygiene standards across 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."

www.thisdaylive.com

wow...... The choppin board in ma kitchen thrice as deadly as ma toilet seater......?? Lawd have marcy......!!!

Hmmm, this is not the first time i'll be reading that kitchen contains more germs than toilet. Does it mean we should start eating off our toilets

Swit up: wow...... The choppin board in ma kitchen thrice as deadly as ma toilet seater......?? Lawd have marcy......!!!

In a lopsided way, the article is kinda accurate

dominique: Hmmm, this is not the first time i'll be reading that kitchen contains more germs than toilet. Does it mean we should start eating off our toilets : o

Even the researcher did not advise eating off the toilet seats...I guess this means extra effort at keeping the chopping board and SPONGE clean...lol

have bleach, 409, lysol in handy. A must for my kitchen and bathroom each.


Me and dorty no be friend.

armyofone: have bleach, 409, lysol in handy. A must for my kitchen and bathroom each.


Me and dorty no be friend.

The contendment isn't your kitchen but your chopping board and dish sponge