Pandemic experts say that airport security trays are dirtier than your toilet seat, but guess what? So is your dishcloth. For most people, going through airport security is not an everyday thing, but shopping, commuting and washing your dinner table and plates probably are. So, here are everyday things you might want to think about more carefully.
Wash your dishcloths!
Just because you wipe down your surfaces doesn’t mean they are necessarily clean if you haven’t sterilised your dishcloth first. Chris Smith, a consultant virologist at the University of Cambridge and the managing editor of the Naked Scientist, insists that you should boil your cloth in a saucepan. “If you look in the average kitchen you’ll find a dishcloth that is probably soaking wet, full of food particles and whatever it has been wiped around with.” he says. “People will then wipe their table with the misapprehension that this germ-laden rag will somehow improve the infection profile of the table.”
Be smart with others’ smartphones
We’ve all been there. You’re out and about and your battery dies or you run out of credit. But think twice before using your friend’s handset. Your phone is warm; tens of thousands of bacteria find this environment nice and toasty. If you must borrow and dial, use earphones with a microphone attached.
Open public doors with your foot
One of Smith’s biggest bugbears is inwardly opening public toilet doors. On the way into your favourite public convenience, if you don’t want to touch the handle, you can use your foot to enter, but what about the way out? “Having diligently washed your hands, you then have to grab the door handle to get out,” says Smith. “The person who doesn’t wash their hands leaves the vestiges of what they’ve deposited in the lavatory and you reacquire whatever it was that was on their fingers.”
Clean your toothbrush holder
Kudos on your mouth hygiene, but if you are using a toothbrush holder that you never wash then those brushstrokes are rather futile. A 2011 report from the public health organisation NSF International found 27% of toothbrush holders were home to Coliform bacteria that can cause salmonella and E coli.
Money
As well as burning a hole in your pocket, paper money could be making you sick. The health commissioner of New York found 135,000 bacteria from washing one bill. The new polymer notes in the UK are three times cleaner, scientists say, but your card is probably the cleanest option.
