Your emotional support water bottle may be doing more damage than you realize.
A new study from waterfiterguru.com found reusable water bottles hold 40,000 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat. To put it as the researchers did, they’re basically a “portable Petri dish.”
It gets worse. Compared to other household objects, the cleanliness of the bottles paints a dirty picture: they contain twice as many germs as a kitchen sink; can hold four times the amount of bacteria as a computer mouse; and 14 times more than your pet’s drinking bowl.
“The human mouth is home to a large number and range of different bacteria,” said Dr. Andrew Edwards, Imperial College London molecular microbiologist. “So it’s not surprising that drinking vessels are covered in microbes.”
Squeeze-top bottles were ultimately the cleanest of the three styles tested, with a tenth of the amount of bacteria as one with a screw-top or straw-fitted lid. So there’s that.
Safe to say, cleaning your bottle needs to be a part of your daily routine if it’s not already.