Foto: Unsplash
Some people find it less difficult than others to wear shoes indoors. While some prefer to leave their walkers at the door, others walk effortlessly through the house with their shoes on. But is that actually dirty? Or even unhealthy?
Okay, it may save you having to vacuum or mop more often, but is wearing shoes indoors also bad for your health? The scientific magazine Quest figured it out. Previously wrote Metro also about the question of whether you throw the yellow mop in the trash can or washing machine?
Are shoes unhealthy indoors?
To answer that question, they examine a number of scientific studies. Including an American study from the University of Houston from 2013, in which researchers took bacterial samples in thirty urban homes. And guess what? Nearly forty percent of the shoe soles contained Clostridium difficile bacteria. This bacteria causes diarrhea and intestinal infections, but most people can handle such bacteria quite well.
Three years later, another team of researchers, from the same university, looked at collected research material on floor dirt and infections. From this they concluded that by walking around a room, dirt can float up from the ground. And it can even cause infections in humans. For this purpose, studies in hospitals were examined. Which showed that wounds became infected. That often doesn’t really play a role at home. In the household this mainly concerns the inhalation of certain substances.
Pathogens via shoes
But it is not that easy to determine exactly whether a certain complaint or infection is caused by the dirt under our shoes. Microbiologist Rijkelt Beumer, from Wageningen University, docks Quest shows that pets are a much greater source of contamination than shoe soles. “Contaminated food and contaminated hands of people who prepare food are also more important for making people sick,” said the microbiologist. According to him, you should be more careful with dirty hands or food than with the soles of your shoes.
And there Beumer answers the question whether we should wear or take off shoes indoors. According to him, pathogens do enter the house through shoes. But because the environment is dry, they cannot grow. “It is possible to survive, sometimes for months if insufficient cleaning is done.” But he still thinks the chance of adults becoming ill is “small.” He emphasizes that the risk for crawling children is greater.
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Comments
2023-10-19 16:11:44
#dirty #shoes #indoors #unhealthy
