The Germs In Your Home – Part 2

March 9, 2017

Interview with Microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba

Mike Carruthers: When you wash your clothes they make look clean but they may not be as clean as you think they are.

Dr. Charles Gerba: Because only 5% of us use hot water anymore our clothes are a lot “germier” than our grandparents were who had to use hot water and dish detergents all of the time.

Environmental microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba who’s also known as “Dr. Germ” is a spokesperson for Service Experts.

Most of us use cold water, it gets the clothes clean, dirt is removed but microbes survive quite well. The heat is really important to killing bacteria and viruses that cause disease. Especially if you have small children their undergarments particularly are quite contaminated.

One thing that helps is heat from the dryer.

That works fairly well if you go more than 30 minutes, you want to really do 30 minutes of course – use that or use bleach if you can or bleach substitute.

Another place germs are lurking is grocery shopping carts they can have all kinds of bacteria including salmonella.

That’s why it’s a good idea to use those disinfecting wipes you see at a lot of stores and either that or don’t let your kids ride in the shopping cart because they do get fairly germy. In our studies we found as many as 90% of the shopping carts have ecoli on them – that largely comes from meat products that get put in the shopping carts.

This may surprise you but Dr. Gerba has tested surfaces in homes to see which are the “germiest” and which are the cleanest.

Well the cleanest object in the household actually is the top of the toilet seat. Largely because people are concerned about getting diseases in the bathroom area and they do a pretty good job.

Dr. Charles Gerba