It’s already established that the self-checkout counters we all know and love are covered in feces. But you really have no idea just how dirty and nasty everything around you is. Well, maybe you do way back in your mind, but have done a great job of compartmentalizing your thoughts. Let’s go ahead and ruin that today: Reusable water bottles might help save the planet, but they can contain more bacteria than a toilet seat. Might as well lap it out of the bowl like man’s best friend, eh?
WaterFilterGuru.com, a team that researches water quality, pollution, and residential water treatment, conducted an experiment to determine how much bacteria can be found inside reusable water bottles. They swabbed different types of bottles three times and found two types of bacteria: gram-negative rods and bacillus. Gram-negative rods are known to cause infections that are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, while certain types of bacillus can lead to gastrointestinal issues. The results of the study showed that a reusable water bottle can hold 12 times more bacteria than a pet’s bowl and 40,000 times more than a toilet seat.
It must be noted that these findings are quite convenient for the researchers—their MO is hawking water filtration, after all. WaterFilterGuru.com insists that “filtering your water at home is a great way to ensure you’re filling those sanitized bottles with the purest water.” Still, the data is not hard to believe because even if this was in part a marketing tactic, many people have brought up the issue of reusable water bottles being nasty. A few years ago, Dr. Philip Tierno, clinical professor of pathology and microbiology at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Mashable reusable water bottles are dirty and the only way to clean them thoroughly is to scrub them using elbow grease. A rinse won’t really do the trick.
The easy fix here is to just wash them early and often. You don’t wanna be patient zero in the next pandemic created by some Hydro Flask virus.
H. Drew Blackburn
H. Drew Blackburn