In every kitchen, you will find a trusty tea towel. Spilled some milk on the table? Grab the tea towel. Left some crumbs on the kitchen counter? It’s OK, we have a tea towel! We use our tea towels to clean up nearly everything in our kitchens, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they are a breeding ground for harmful bacteria.
Kitchens are a mix of germs and bacteria. They can enter our homes in various ways like uncooked food, plants and pets. This means it’s very likely for foodborne infections to be found directly within our kitchens.
As well as this, our hands and uncooked food are usually rich in germs and tea towels often pick up bacteria with things they come into close contact with.
How dirty our are tea towels, really?
A study found that 90% of tea towels used to clean chopping boards that had raw chicken prepared on them became polluted with salmonella, too, according to The Conversation.
Various studies have analysed the relationship between tea towels and germs, including one which sampled 100 tea towels and found Staphylococcus aureus – which is usually found on the skin but can cause several issues like joint infections, abscesses, and possibly even pneumonia – present on the tea towels.
There’s further bad news for folks who use tea towels to wipe down their kitchens, as another study looked at 46 kitchens and found a whole heap of harmful bacterial species living on kitchen surfaces.
These bacterias included enterobacter, which can cause infections, urinary tract infections, heart, bone and eye infections. The study also found kebsiella, which has been associated with significant infections of the lungs, bladder, brain and blood, and even E.Coli was discovered.
How can you clean your tea towel?
The number of germs found on these towels was dependent on how often they were used, washed and the amount of time they had been dried for.
Firstly, the research found that rinsing tea towels in hot water at 60°C was more likely to limit the levels of bacteria spreading by contaminated cloths. This is significant as infection probability is usually linked to the number of bacteria you ingest.
But even after rinsing, tea towels are the perfect breeding ground for bacteria as they are often damp and water allows germs to grow.
Your best bet is to soak your tea towels in hot water in a clean sink. After this, dry your towel outside as you will reduce the amount of bacteria stored in the towels.
You can also wash your tea towels with baking soda and vinegar. Ideally, you should be washing your tea towels every day unless they haven’t been used.
Another you can reduce germs spreading in the kitchen is by using paper towels. Sure, we all love our tea towels but they shouldn’t be used to clean up everything.