The hidden germs lurking in your home

From her hand cream to a toddler’s sippy cup, mum Caroline Jones sent a number of everyday items to be tested in a lab – and, shockingly, the results revealed some rather nasty bacteria...

We all like to think we keep our homes pretty clean – but can you remember when you last replaced your toothbrush, washed a bag for life or disinfected the family’s sports water bottles?

Because while these common household items may look clean enough to the naked eye, they can in fact be harbouring a host of potentially harmful bacteria, only visible under a lab microscope.

Germs – the general name for bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms – are everywhere.

Luckily, 99% of them don’t hurt us and many can actually be beneficial to our health by supporting our immune system.

However, the other 1% can be unpleasant and even potentially deadly for some people, causing everything from the common cold to a life-threatening infection.

You may think you know where all these germs fester – the toilet brush, the bin lid or the soles of your shoes – but many unexpected items and places are germ hotspots too.

To find out just what sort of bugs could be lurking, we asked scientists at London Metropolitan University to test 12 household objects from my own home. Worryingly, they discovered that every one of them contained a host of germs. Indeed, several items harboured hazardous levels of bacteria, including salmonella in a pot of hand cream – which can cause life-threatening food poisoning if ingested – and enterobacter cloacae inside a toddler’s cup, a bug normally found in human poo!

The lab also found klebsiella pneumoniae inside a handbag . This particular strain was in the headlines this month because a woman died in India after contracting it following a trip to hospital with a broken leg.

The bacteria normally lives in the gut without causing disease, but in this case had entered the bloodstream through a wound and mutated into a superbug resistant to all 26 types of antibiotics tried.

“The items tested had klebsiella in high enough numbers to cause infection,” confirms Dr Paul Matewele, the leading microbiologist testing our samples. “However, this would only happen if they were given the opportunity – for example, by coming into contact with someone with a weakened immune system or open wounds.”

Here are the items tested and the 12 strains of bacteria Paul and his team found present at high enough levels to be a potential health hazard…

Everything tested was found to harbour bugs at high enough levels to be a potential health threat