Is the toilet seat really the dirtiest place in the home?

[Jazzy]

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.



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.



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.

Read more



Did you know this about the sponge and dishcloth?



I didn't and from now on, I'll use paper towels!

 

[Evil Eye]

Well I knew the toilet seat was pretty clean... makes sense for a sponge to be dirty really.