How Long Can STDs Live On Skin? In short, STDs can live on the skin for a short period of time. Depending on the strain of the STD, it can survive for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, with most strains surviving for around 8 hours.
Viral STDs such as Hepatitis, HPV, HIV and Herpes can live outside the body on surfaces anywhere from a few seconds up to a few weeks. Cleaning surfaces can kill these viruses, but you can never tell by simply looking at a surface.
Since bacterial STIs cannot survive outside the environment of mucous membranes in the body, it is essentially impossible to contract one by sitting on public toilet seats. Viral causes of STIs cannot survive for long outside the human body either, so they generally die quickly on surfaces like toilet seats.
They can't survive in air or on surfaces (such as a toilet seat), making it virtually impossible for you to contract a bacterial STI in this way. Examples of bacterial STIs include: Gonorrhea: Spread through vaginal, anal, or oral sex without a condom or other barrier method.
You can't get STDs from casual contact like sharing clothes, hugging, holding hands, or toilet seats. You can only get an STD from contact with semen, vaginal fluids, blood, saliva, or skin-to-skin genital touching.
Some STDs—like HIV, chlamydia and gonorrhea—are spread through sexual fluids, like semen. Other STDs, including HIV and hepatitis B, are also spread through blood. Genital herpes, syphilis, and human papillomavirus (HPV) are most often spread through genital skin-to-skin contact.
Share Sheets (or Towels or Clothes)
The single-celled protozoan parasite called Trichomonas vaginalis causes trichomoniasis. This parasite loves damp fabrics and can hang out for almost an hour outside the body waiting for you. Crabs, or pubic lice, are creatures that can also stick around in your bedding or clothing.
A couple can't create an STD from nothing — they have to get spread from one person to another. But just because someone hasn't had any genital-to-genital contact with anyone else doesn't necessarily mean they don't have an STD.
Some viral STDs stay with you for life, such as herpes and HIV. Others, such as hepatitis B and human papillomavirus (HPV), can be prevented with vaccines but cannot be cured.
Myth: You can catch chlamydia from a toilet seat
Fact: The bacterium that causes chlamydia does not live outside of the human body, so you can only be infected by having sex with an infected person without a condom.
4. Chlamydia Is Only Contagious From Person to Person. You can only get chlamydia by having intimate sexual contact with an infected person, not from casual contact, touching another person's clothing, or consuming contaminated food or water.
People can sometimes get syphilis by contact with infected skin sores. However, the bacteria cannot survive long outside the human body so syphilis is not spread through contact with objects (such as toilet seats, door handles) that have been touched by a person with syphilis.
Chlamydia and gonorrhea can be spread through sexual contact, from mother to baby during childbirth, or from sharing sex toys. The bacteria that cause these infections cannot survive outside of the body. This means that casual contact with contaminated surfaces or objects is unlikely to cause infection.
It's possible to sleep with someone with an STD and not contract it, but you should still be taking the proper precautions when it comes to your sexual health. If your sexual partner tells you that they have an STI, you may be worried that you were exposed to the infection during sex.
The risk of getting an STD significantly increases with unprotected sex. Without using barrier methods for protection, the likelihood of contracting STDs such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis can reach up to 30% during sexual encounters with an infected individual.
As most people do not have symptoms, it is possible the person (who tested positive) could have had chlamydia/gonorrhea from a previous relationship, and has not passed it to their partner yet.
This disease is more common at the period of greatest sexual activity. It was always believed to be a sexually transmitted disease. But, an extensive literature search showed that nonsexual transmission of trichomonas can occur through fomites like towels and toilet seats and from swimming pools.
While it is possible to have vaginal, oral, or anal sex with an infected partner and not get infected, it's unlikely. For more information, check out the “Prevention” link on the home page. What symptoms can develop if you get chlamydia or gonorrhea after giving oral sex?
Chlamydia is an organism that has very specific requirements that allow it to exist in the cervix, urethra, and fallopian tube. (It also can also infect the cornea of the eye.) Because of these specific requirements, chlamydia cannot live outside the body, such as on toilet seats, bath towels or bed linens.