Are our TOO CLEAN n

Standards in hygiene have changed so much that it’s leaving kids vulnerable to infection By Julie McCaffrey

WHEN a landmark study into childhood disease concluded that today’s kids are “too clean”, many young mums and grandmas gave each other the side eye.

Because while mums are busy disinfecting their children’s clothes and homes, grans are insisting that kids should be allowed to get dirty.

Professor Mel Greaves, from the Cancer Research Institute London, says we should listen to Granny. He summarised 30 years of research and believes infants not in contact with bacteria in their first year are left vulnerable to a rare form of childhood leukaemia.

He says: “Infection was first suspected of causing this cancer around 100 years ago. The problem is not infection, the problem is lack of infection.”

The study offers hope of preventing the disease by exposing infants to “common and harmless bugs”.

So just how have hygiene standards changed over the last generation? And are our kids really too clean?

We asked one young mum and grandma to talk us through their cleaning routines...