Kitchen Sponges Are Bacterial Paradise
Source: ScienceAlert, by Pete Dockrill
Analyzing over 220,000 pyrosequencing reads collected from 14 sponges, researchers from Germany found:
Your sponge is naaaasty!
No amount of running in dishwashers, treating with hot sudsy water, or putting in the microwave will change the simple fact that your sponge is .... a sponge for bacteria.
Of the 360 OTUs (Operational Taxanomic Unit), 5 out of the 10 most common OTUs were potential pathogens. This included Acinetobacter johnsonii, Moraxella osloensis, and Chryseobacterium hominis.
Take home:
To be clean, replace your sponge once a week.
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