8 Common Household Items That Are Dirtier Than A Toilet Seat

It turns out that your toilet seat is nowhere near the dirtiest surface in your house. Last month, a study revealed that the kitchen sponge was the dirtiest surface in the house, with bacteria levels far surpassing those found on a toilet seat. That’s right, the sponge you use to clean your utensils and plates carries a greater amount of germs than your toilet.

And when looking into the issue of cleanliness further, there are a host of other surfaces that return scarily high levels of bacteria when swabbed and tested.

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of the popular TV series Myth Busters conducted thorough research into the topic years ago, producing some scary results.

The scientifically minded duo tested 8 everyday objects to measure their cleanliness, including money, kitchen sponge, keyboard, light switch, mobile phone, shopping cart, TV remote and the toilet seat.

To determine cleanliness, Savage and Hyneman swabbed the surfaces for 10 seconds, and then created Petri dishes to be left overnight, in order to determine which surface returned the greatest number of bacterial colonies.

Enlisting the help of biology students from the University of California, Berkeley, to validate their results, they received some shocking results. Surprisingly, the toilet seat had the lowest colony count, with the kitchen sponge returning the highest result.

These are their findings, ranked dirtiest to cleanest, based on the experiment.

Kitchen sponge
Money
Light switch
Keyboard
TV remote
Shopping cart
Mobile
Toilet seat

Scott Henderson

As a fitness addict, adventure sport lover, and passionate story-teller, Scott Henderson is committed to living the Men’s Health brand. When he’s not researching and writing about the latest health and fitness news, you’ll find him crushing it in the gym, running up a mountain, or out on the waves.