Pop quiz: What’s the germiest part of the bathroom?
Chances are, you guessed the toilet.
That makes sense, considering what goes in there, but you’re wrong.
That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — discovered when we recently chatted with microbiologist Jason Tetro, aka “The Germ Guy,” about the microbes prowling in our bathrooms and how to vanquish them.
Listen to the full episode by pressing play:
“When we talk about germiest, we’re talking about the most number of microbes,” Tetro, the author of “The Germ Files” and “The Germ Code,” told us.
Those can include bacteria, viruses and fungi, and they’re more likely to thrive in one particular spot.
“We have to sort of think about where are the surfaces that have a lot of surface area,” Tetro said. “When you look at a bathroom and you look for something that has the highest surface area, you’re going to see something incredibly obvious … the bath mat.”
These innocent-looking little cloth rectangles are “designed to be nice and fluffy, and they have little pills, and within all that is surface area — that’s where we’re going to really start to see a lot of those microbes grow.”
That’s especially true because bath mats are made to soak up water, and moisture encourages microbe growth.
Even grosser, Tetro revealed that fecal matter can be launched up to six feet from a toilet when we flush and that a plume of droplets can land on our bath mat.
“Those fecal microbes can potentially cause infections and other problems,” he said.
So what can we do to keep our bath mats less microbial?
First, make sure you’re always closing the lid of your toilet before you flush. That will help contain the plume and keep surfaces in your bathroom — including your tooth brush — less likely to be deluged by a fecal-filled spray.
Towel off when you’re still in the tub so there’s less water for your mat to drink up, and…
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