In fact, that sponge is likely the dirtiest item in your home, Gerba says. “It's probably home to hundreds of millions of bacteria,” he says. NSF agrees. Its researchers found that 75% of home dish sponges and rags contained Coliform.
Shockingly, the researchers found 363,631,038 average normalized microorganisms per gram of sponge! These study findings support those from another study, in which researchers found that as many as 200 million bacteria could be living in just 1 square inch of a sponge!
Did you know that your belly button is the dirtiest part of the body, according to the Public Library of Science? “The belly button harbors a high population of bacteria,” Dr.
1. Behind your ears. If you do not wash your hair on a particular day you are also not cleaning the area behind your ears. This part of your body can collect bacteria and dirt.
The cleanest part typically, if not overcome with disease, are the air sacs (alveoli) in your lungs. It's a sterile environment. A vast majority of the human body have bacteria as part of the normal human flora. The mouth being the dirtiest part of the body housing the most harmful bacteria.
Pillowcases can harbor up to 17 thousand times the bacteria that the average toilet seat carries — even if they've been washed as recently as a week ago, according a new report by Amerisleep that analyzed the growth of bacteria colonies on unwashed, slept-in bedding over a period of four weeks.
The money was tested for eight types of disease-causing organisms and all were confirmed present on the notes and coins. A cellphone. Phones were tested and confirmed to be tainted with 12 pathogens, with Staphylococcus species being the most prevalent.
1. Kitchen Sponge/Dish Rag. The item most frequently used to clean dishes and countertops was actually the germiest place found in most homes. Sponges and dish rags can pick up bacteria during the cleaning process, and, if not properly sanitized between uses, can be a prime spot for germ growth.
“Of the 60,000 types of germs that people come in contact with on a daily basis … only about 1 [percent] to 2 percent are potentially dangerous to normal people with normal immunity,” he said.
Germs live everywhere. You can find germs (microbes) in the air; on food, plants and animals; in the soil and water — and on just about every other surface, including your body. Most germs won't harm you.
Kitchen Faucet
You probably already know bathroom faucets are a hotbed for germs. That's why many public restrooms have moved to automated models. But the kitchen faucet can host an unsavory bunch of bacteria, like E.
The reason many products say 'kills 99.9 percent' of bacteria on the label is because that is the performance threshold for the sanitizer test EPA requires (ASTM E1153) if people want to market products as sanitizers. In other words, a 99.9 percent reduction is EPA's arbitrary cutoff for sanitizer performance.
They test it to certain tolerances and the law for cleaning products says they have to meet a three log reduction. That is 99.9%. But if products killed 100%, that would be dangerous for people as it would mean that we would be exposed to products too powerful for humans.
Scientists at the University of Arizona found that your phone is ten times dirtier than most toilet seats. Gross! Here are other items that are dirtier than a toilet seat. Another study also found that a typical high schooler's smartphone can have as many as 17,000 bacterial gene copies on it.
You may want to peel your mobile phone away from your face, considering it may be dirtier than a toilet handle, the Daily Mail reported. A U.K. study tested 30 mobile phones for levels of potentially harmful bacteria, or the total viable bacterial count (TVC).
Unfortunately, dirty dollars—whether denominations of $1 or $100—are not whisked away to the cleaners when they need it. They tend to circulate for about four to 15 years, according to the Federal Reserve. And U.S. coins last even longer: about 25 years, the Fed says.
Researchers looked at 90 American offices and found men had more bacteria on office equipment (such as computers) — 10 percent, in fact — compared with women. One study found women's bathrooms were dirtier than men's. Researchers attributed that to more children and heavier traffic in female bathrooms.
They found that keyboards can have high levels of bacteria on them and that shared keyboards tend to have more bacteria than those used by only one person. Even more disturbing, research by University of Arizona researchers also found that the average desktop has 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.
Fact 4: Toilet seats have less germs than mouths! It is estimated that toilet seats have 3,200 bacteria per square inch, where as saliva has an estimated 100 million microbes of bacteria per mililitre with anywhere between 400 and 600 different species. Fact 5: Your mouth encounters more germs than the rectal area!
“Your pubic area is much dryer than your armpits, so the resident bacteria is different.” Your groin also shares an abundance of staphylococcus bacteria with your pits and feet. “These are on all parts of your skin, but they're present in greater numbers in these areas because there's more moisture,” says Preti.
Tooth enamel is the hardest part of the body. The toughest and most mineralized component in the human body is dental enamel. It's not a bone, but a tissue. This tissue has a significant mineral content, making it the hardest substance available.