Public transport, restaurants, public toilets… These different places are breeding grounds for bacteria. The gym, especially the machines and accessories, are also full of germs invisible to the naked eye. But which equipment is most infested with germs? We take stock.
- A self-service electric scooter contains 58,000 times more bacteria than a toilet seat.
- The bus is the mode of transport with the highest number of CDUs, ie 40 million. That’s four times more germs than those found in a kitchen sink.
If you regularly go to the gym and use the machines, watch out for bacteria! In these spaces, where many people train, the sweat combined with the humidity of the surrounding air favors the proliferation of microbes. Based on this observation, the company Velotric wanted to determine the dirtiest equipment and quantify the number of micro-organisms to which practitioners are exposed during their sports session.
Sports halls: “more living microbes than household surfaces”
As part of’a study, they took, using a swab, the surfaces of several objects available in fitness clubs, such as a floor mat, dumbbells, a treadmill or an elliptical trainer. Then these samples were analyzed in the lab and the team looked at colony forming units (CFU), which are used to assess the number of viable germs in a sample.
“Even with signs instructing patrons to sanitize equipment after using it, we found that gyms can harbor many dangerous bacteria. The surfaces examined contained more live microbes than household surfaces,” can we read in the works.
Dumbbells, floor mats and treadmills are the most infested with bacteria
According to the authors, floor mats contained the highest number of bacteria (5.9 million CFU), about four times the amount found on a computer keyboard. Among all the equipment analyzed, dumbbells are also breeding grounds for microbes, with 270,000 CFU. “That’s 19 times the amount of bacteria we found on a pet’s tennis ball!” the company reported.
Last equipment most infested with germs: treadmills. Those made available in gyms contained almost three times more bacteria than a treadmill available at home. “The personal carpet was only full of bacilli, while the public carpet also contained Gram-positive cocci bacteria (the best known of which are staphylococci, streptococci and pneumococci).”
Sports halls: simple actions to avoid getting sick
Faced with these alarming results, it is recommended to always wash your hands before and after using equipment and to disinfect machines and accessories that come into contact with your hands or clothing after a sports session. To get rid of germs, it is advisable to use suitable disinfectant sprays or wipes.
