It’s common knowledge that public toilets are a breeding ground for germs, and since I was a kid I’ve avoided holding handrails on escalators thanks to hearing a probably completely made up statistic about how dirty they are, but what about the items, such as supermarket trolleys and baskets, that we casually handle without a second thought?
Great news: supermarket trolleys have, wait for it, 361 times more bacteria than a toilet door knob.
Yep, you read that right. We’ll just give you a second to think back about how many times you’ve touched a supermarket trolley and then snuck a cheeky grape while perusing the aisles or driven home and then made lunch straight away.
The discovery was made following testing handle surfaces from four types of stores across New Zealand: traditional grocery stores, budget stores, superstores, and more upscale stores, with three-quarters of trolleys tested containing the most harmful type of bacteria – including deadly E. coli and salmonella, The New Zealand Herald reports.
And though we’d like to blame these statistics on those dirty Kiwis across the ditch, we can only guess Australia’s findings would be scarily similar.
Just last year, Gold Coast mum Vivienne Wardrop spent a horrific 10-days in hospital with her incredibly sick 10-month-old son after he touched a germ infested supermarket trolley, the Gold Coast Bulletin reports.
Though supermarkets vow to they do indeed clean their equipment daily, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to carry around hand sanitiser – or a full blown gas suit – next time you head to the shops.
RELATED: Woolworths Worker Secretly Filmed Up Women’s Skirts
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
