Want a house free of bugs? Ban pets — and dry dishes with paper towels
Oh, and NEVER do the washing-up by hand! Read how doctors protect their families from infection and it could change your life
We live in a miasma of bacteria. not only do our bodies, which contain up to ten times as many bacterial cells as human ones, shed microbes everywhere we go, but everything we touch and the air we breathe contains bacteria.
Many are clearly harmless, but others can cause serious infections and health problems. So how can you best protect yourself?
Sometimes the advice is confusing. While some research highlights the risks of not washing your hands well enough, there’s also evidence that cleaning too much can cause allergies. So we asked leading experts in health and hygiene to reveal their own cleaning habits in the home . . .
WE FITTED AN ELECTRIC HAND DRYER IN THE LOO
Dr PETER Young, a critical care consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS foundation trust When you work in a hospital, you see how quickly bacteria can make someone who is relatively healthy very unwell, so good hygiene measures are more critical than in the home. But it’s important to be careful there, too.
various studies on public loos have made me quite concerned about the spread of infectious particles from surfaces and the air. So in our WC at home, to avoid this we have automatic toilet flushers and soap dispensers, taps with sensors that are activated when they detect movement and an electric hand dryer — we never use hand towels in the WC.
Drying is the final step in hand cleansing, and i don’t want my hands contaminated by other people’s faecal matter. There has been some disagreement as to whether towels or blow dryers are worse, but in my opinion there’s nothing worse than an over-used hand towel (or a smelly dishcloth).
in the kitchen, we use disposable paper towels; and while we do have cotton tea towels to dry with, these are replenished very frequently (we have a stack of around 20 in a drawer).
We have a couple of pots of antibacterial alcohol gels around the house, which we also use if a family member has a cold. i don’t think i’m particularly fastidious with hygiene, but with food preparation i am.
Most types of bacteria that are innocuous in small quantities can be harmful once in a growth medium such as food. We’re fussy about storing cooked food, making everything clean and airtight — we have lots of Tupperware.
i don’t like animals in the house and we don’t have pets. My personal view is that they’re very unhygienic: wiping their bottoms on couches and shedding hair on everything they touch.
has all this made a difference? in my 25 years of work, i have never had to take a day off work for a cold or flu. And my family, including my two kids, have never had food poisoning.
it shows that with simple, sensible infection control guidelines in everyday life it is possible to avoid transmitting infections most of the time.
I WON’T EAT MEAT WITHOUT TAKING ITS TEMPERATURE
Dr LISA ACKERLEY, a chartered environmental health and food safety consultant While i’m not obsessive about cleaning, i take more precautions than my f amily and friends do — they’re often surprised when they see some of my habits, but once they understand why, some have been converted.
My thinking is that getting ill wastes a lot of my time, so it’s much easier to take simple preventative steps.
These do work — my family rarely gets ill and the last time i had food poisoning, about 18 months ago, it was from a local restaurant i’d visited with colleagues.
it takes just a few particles of e.coli, found on root vegetables and raw meat, to make you ill, so i get cl eaning as s oon as i ’ ve handled them.
That means wiping the worktop with disinfectant spray or an antibacterial wipe. Then with a separate wipe — to avoid crosscontamination — i go over any cupboards, door handles or worktops i may have touched.
When it comes to cooking meat, i don’t rely on its look or the time it’s been in the oven to know when it’s cooked: i use a food thermometer. As long as the thermometer reads 75c in the centre of the food you’re safe, as this is enough to kill bacteria.
i never wash up by hand; only a dishwasher could get hot enough to kill bacteria (mine is set to 60c or 65c, higher than the standard 30c).
And if i use a dish brush to remove large pieces of food first, that brush goes straight into the dishwasher to stop the bacteria building up.
The general consensus i s that cutlery should be placed with the handles down for better cleaning, but i always stack them with the handles up to avoid touching and contaminating the ends we put in our mouths when they’re taken out. i also check the dishwasher filters every time i use it, because otherwise dirt is being swished around. And i use a dishwasher cleaner every month or so.
i don’t like using dishcloths or tea towels — my research has found these are often the dirtiest things in the home: i prefer paper towels and an antibacterial spray.
in the bathroom, i descale the shower head whenever there’s limescale build-up on the underside, because bacteria thrive inside and stagnant water in fittings can lead to legionnaires’ disease.
everyone in my family has their own hand towel to prevent the spread of infection, and these are washed at least once a week. hand towels in the shared cloakroom get washed every other day. All towels and linens are washed above 60c, more like 90c. For delicate underwear or gym kit that can’t be placed in a hot wash, i use an antibacterial laundry sanitiser (which you add to the wash, like fabric conditioner). i never mix washing tea towels with knickers, as faecal bacteria could transfer to the towels. Cats could be carrying e.coli and all sorts of bugs from roaming around in the garden, but in general, i think the benefits of having a pet outweigh the health risks, so i don’t tend to worry about ours.
I BAN MY FAMILY FROM USING TEA TOWELS
PROFESSOR HUGH PENNINGTON, Emeritus professor of bacteriology at the university of Aberdeen in MY house, all the dishes and cutlery are dried with disposable paper towels, as tea towels pick up bugs after more than one use.
i don’t use wipes or antibacterial gels for washing my hands as soap and water is much more effective; the detergent kill s bacteria while scrubbing physically gets them off, and it costs less.
i think cleaning the bathroom is more of a social thing than hygienic as most bugs are washed away.
The bathroom is only really a problem if i have guests staying over and there are lots of people using it.
Generally speaking, the bugs we have in our bowels are quite friendly bugs, so don’t pose a huge threat — older people are prone to infections such as clostridium difficile because they’re often on antibiotics and this would get rid of friendly bugs in the gut, and make way for more harmful bugs to take their place.
i just keep the bathroom ‘ socially clean’ — getting rid of stains and bad smells — with standard bathroom cleaner.
Cleaning your home doesn’t change the odds of getting a bad bug, because bugs come back, especially skin bugs as bits of skin flake off into the air and get into dust around the house. The last time i had food poisoning was on holiday in France many years ago. I blamed the sausages, which contained tripe — i wasn’t at home so the bacteria were out of my control.
I WASH BEDSHEETS TWICE A WEEK
Dr LAURA BOWATER a microbiologist and senior lecturer at the university of East Anglia SOMETIMES, i wonder whether it’s my fault that both my children now aged 17 and 19, have allergies. When they were younger, if a pacifier or a toy fell on the floor I would never let them have it back until i’d sterilised it by steaming it or
putting it in the dishwasher or a hot machine wash.
over time, I learned about the hygiene hypothesis — the theory that being too clean means babies’ immune systems aren’t exposed to enough germs to develop normally — and now worry that keeping my children too clean raised their risk.
I used to use antibacterial everything — soaps, wipes, gels, chopping boards — but I’m not so sure about them now, as there’s no evidence they’re more effective. In my research we’ve seen soap and water is just as good.
Also, many antibacterial materials — for example, chopping boards with microban (an antimicrobial agent that’s impregnated into the board when it’s manufactured) — can lead to antimicrobial resistance, so the bacteria can still grow on them.
Bacteria can’t get resistant to soap and water because it targets them in a number of ways: hot water can kill the bacteria, rubbing physically removes them and soap breaks down their outer membrane, so they can’t survive.
I rarely use tea towels — paper ones are more hygienic. I sometimes use J-Cloths, as they’re disposable — after a couple of days I throw them away.
Before I found disposable dishcloths, I used to wash and bleach dishcloths after every use.
We do dry our hands on towels, but they’re washed regularly — around twice a week in a hot wash. The same goes for bed sheets.
I clean the entire bathroom with bleach fairly regularly (if using a public loo, I try not to touch the door or handle with my hands but use my elbow instead). Anything that I can use bleach on, I do — from flooring, which I clean once a week, to any dirt off the bottom of shoes.
The cat litter tray is on a newspaper and I use antibacterial floor wipes every day underneath and around it. The only reason I don’t use bleach is because it would damage the flooring there.
As long as I wash my hands after touching her, I am not too fussy about the cat. But I wouldn’t let her eat off my plate or sleep in my bed.
I am absolutely oCD about food hygiene, especially uncooked meat. There’s a move to eat hamburgers which are still slightly pink in the middle, but I would never eat those.
I also never let raw meat touch any kitchen surface and have separate chopping boards for everything to ensure no cross- contamination; they’re all put into the dishwasher at a high temperature.
With mould or anything funny-looking on food, some people scrape it off, but I throw it out; as a microbiologist I know the mould is the tip of the iceberg and there’s a lot more of it or other microbes.
I CLEAN THE ENTIRE HOUSE WITH BLEACH
Professor Peter whorweLL, a consultant gastroenterologist at wythenshawe hospital in Manchester I See gastroenteritis ( i nflammation of the stomach and intestines caused by an infection) an awful lot, and some patients get into serious trouble as a result, so that’s made me very aware of the risks.
Two thirds of chickens are infected with campylobacter, and red meat in particular can carry e.coli, so they’re always stored at the bottom of my fridge to stop them leaking on other things.
I am also particularly vigilant about cooking frozen meat, making sure it’s completely thawed, as partially frozen meat could mean the bacteria inside aren’t killed.
I clean my fridge with diluted milton sterilising fluid or diluted bleach, though probably not as often as I should.
In fact, I tend to use a bit of bleach to clean any surface because it’s the only thing known to kill just about all germs — I don’t use antibacterial wipes because they’re more expensive and not as effective.
Hand gels are only useful when there are no handwashing facilities — and it’s important to wash hands after repeatedly using them, as the jelly substance builds up on the hands, creating a layer without any antibacterial properties.
I don’t worry about getting germs from the bathroom, but I like to clean regularly so it looks and smells nice, with the floor, sink and loo cleaned once a week with bleach.
I DISINFECT THE FRIDGE HANDLE EVERY DAY
Professor Sally Bloomfield, chairman of the international scientific forum on home hygiene and honorary professor at the London school of hygiene & tropical Medicine I Am very paranoid when preparing raw food because of harmful microbes, and have an area in the kitchen where I prepare raw food and another where I assemble ready to eat foods.
People say soap and water is enough for cleaning surfaces, but my research shows using a soapy cloth j ust spreads germs to other surfaces, so I always disinfect surfaces and utensils with bleach i mmediately after handling raw food — bleach kills everything, including viruses.
I clean my hands by rubbing soap thoroughly into them for at least 15 seconds, getting it into all the tiny areas and under my nails, then rinse thoroughly with water and dry properly.
The lid on the waste bin also builds up bacteria as it’s frequently touched with dirty hands, so I spray it with disinfectant and wipe it with a clean tea towel once a day — the cloth then goes in the wash. The same goes for the fridge handle.
I also disinfect the sink, particularly the tap handles. I rinse a clean cloth, in soap and water, spray the surface with bleach and wipe the surface to make sure it is free from germs, then go over with a different, dry cloth.
Both cloths are then washed by hand immediately and left to dry on a radiator; we have evidence that one particular germ — salmonella — can breed if it’s left in a wet dishcloth overnight.
I think disposable paper towels in the kitchen are a good idea, but not everyone can afford them, and I tend to use cloths. I have never had food poisoning.
Linens and towels are laundered once a week on a 40c wash and I always use oxygen bleach-based tablets or powders which boosts germ-killing powers.