What’s Dirtier – Your Toilet, Your Cell Phone or Your Steering Wheel?
It's reported that the average person touches their cell phones 2,617 times a day. And we all know what happens to a toilet. But what's filthier? Your cell phone, your toilet or is it actually your steering wheel?
In 2019, website CarRentals.com conducted a study of 1,000 people to find out what percentage of drivers regularly sanitize their cars and found that a very low 32% rarely perform this duty. In fact, most drivers said they only clean their cars once a year!
The website referred to the National Center for Biotechnology Information and found that a car's interior is among the filthiest places on earth - a whopping 4x dirtier than your toilet seat and 6x dirtier than your cell phone screen.
They measured the filthiness of a car's interior parts through the average amount of bacteria per square centimeter, otherwise known as colony-forming units (CFU). Steering wheels are found to have 629 CFU while an average cell phone screen is at 100 CFU. Public toilet seats? 172 CFU.
Diving deeper into the study found the two most common types of bacteria found in cars are Staphylococcus bacteria and Propionibacterium. We're talking food poisoning, inflammation and skin infection such as MRSA, and these are just the two most common bacteria found – there are roughly 700 different bacteria strains living inside a typical vehicle.
Our busy grab-and-go lifestyles are the biggest perpetrator: we're so busy that we're eating in our cars, however, this study might have you thinking about getting your take-out home first.
But what about my hot fries? You have to get at those right away. Just saying.