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Your toothbrush is covered in hundreds of viruses – but luckily they ‘don’t target people’
The bathroom is where we go to clean ourselves, but did you know the showerhead and toothbrush are covered in hundreds of viruses?
You don’t need to visit a tropical rainforest to find a diversity of wildlife, they are present within your bathrooms. However, there’s no reason to fret. Scientists believe these viruses can be a solution to real problems.
Scientists find hundreds of viruses in the bathroom
The thought of being surrounded by viruses while relaxing after a long day can be scary, but they are more useful than you would imagine.
Researchers behind “Operation Pottymouth” – a previous study inspired by concerns about bacteria on toothbrushes – conducted another study to understand the nature of wildlife living in our bathrooms.
The microbiologists from Northwestern University found that showerheads and toothbrushes in our bathrooms are teeming with over 600 different viruses – most of which have “never been seen before.”
As scary as it sounds, researchers say they are harmless because bacteria are their sole target and not humans. “The microorganisms collected in the study are bacteriophage, or ‘phage,’ a type of virus that infects and replicates inside of bacteria,” they said.
The study was born out of curiosity about the microbes we are surrounded by inside our homes. Since they prefer environments with water, showerheads, and toothbrushes naturally become their homes.
Right way to clean your showerhead
As viruses found in the study target bacteria, researchers hope to use them to clean pathogens out of plumbing systems.
“We want to look at all the functions these viruses might have and figure out how we can use them,” said Erica M. Hartmann, the lead author of the study.
As for keeping the showerheads clean, she recommends soaking them in vinegar to remove calcium or simply washing them with plain soap and water.
While she doesn’t recommend antimicrobial toothbrushes, replacing toothbrush heads regularly is necessary. As the vast majority of microbes around us don’t make us sick, she says we should learn to “embrace them.”
Furthermore, using a lot of disinfectants will only make them more resistant, thus making them harder to treat.
