It’s November and peak season for winter nasties including the norovirus (the winter vomiting bug). How can you keep the bugs at bay? Hm mm well, if you’re struggling in on the Tube or bus every day and work in a crowded office it can be tricky (unless you turn Japanese and wear a mask), but on the home front there are some useful things you can do. Basically I’m referring to keeping your home clean – I mean really clean – and that includes taps in the bathroom, toilet seats, shower screens, draining boards, dishwashers and kitchen sink plug holes, which when you hear about all the microbes multiplying at the rate of knots around your home is easier said than done.
The bacteria that bug us most
I heard Professor Mark Fielder, a microbiology expert from Kingston University, speak at a recent briefing on household cleanliness and was shocked to discover for instance that microbes from your toilet can be propelled onto the atmosphere and land on your toothbrush and hand towels if you forget to put the lid down when you flush!
Bacteria are tiny, single celled (or noncellular) organisms which are found everywhere. They are around one micrometre (one thousandth of a millimetre) in size but can multiply extremely quickly in the right conditions. For instance E.coli can replicate a whole generation in 20 minutes and within eight hours a single bacterium on a damp cloth can multiply to six million.
Dodgy chicken
Kitchen danger ( my kitchen on a good day actually)
In this era of antibacterial sprays and wipes you’d think most of us would have wised up to the dangers lurking on our kitchen surfaces – but according to a new survey by Zoflora (makers of the nation’s favourite disinfectant) just 54 per cent of us rate the kitchen as the most important place to keep clean and 27 per cent of us do not consider either their kitchen, toilet or bathroom as their top priority when cleaning. A scientific study conducted back in 1998 looked for levels of faecal coliforms (think you can guess what that they are) at 14 places split evenly between kitchens and bathrooms.It found the kitchen was more heavily contaminated than the bathroom and the toilet seat was actually the least contaminated site. The areas most heavily contaminated were the places that were moist and/or frequently touched – including the kitchen sink, bath drain areas and kitchen sink taps.
If you’ll excuse me I’m off to disinfect my worktops……and I’m not liking the look of my keyboard much either…
PS Feed your paranoia on this ….
whatsupwithyourhealth.com 