Germy shoes

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Oh. My. Gosh. There are germs on my shoes. In fact, if my shoes are like an average pair of shoes, each may contain something like 421,000 bacteria on the outside and 2,887 on the inside. Among the bacteria residing on my shoes are the common gut bacterium Escherichia colias well as Klebsiella pneumoniaeand Serratia ficaria. All can cause sickness.

The data come from the laboratory of Charles Gerba, a professor at the University of Arizona. He’s the same microbiologist who showed us that the toilet seat is one of the cleanest places in a bathroom and that the filthiest area in the home is the kitchen -- and within it, the kitchen sponge, which is a festering zoo of microbial life. Check out his academic web page and you’ll see a long list of studies he’s done investigating microscopic life forms in sewage, estuaries, tap water, clams, day-care centers, swimming pools, restaurant dishcloths and diapers in landfills.

In the study, 10 volunteers wore washable shoes for two weeks, and at the end of it, their shoes were swabbed for bacteria, then washed and tested again. ‘More than 90% of bacteria collected on worn shoes can be eliminated with one wash cycle,’ explains a news release from the Rockport Co., which makes machine-washable shoes and commissioned the report.

Want to see a video of the study results? Go to ‘Life of a Shoe,’ which ‘demonstrates how vulnerable shoes are to bacteria,’ as the company puts it in a news release. ( I hope the shoes didn’t get sick.)

Compelling cinematography, but I am not going to start laundering my shoes. After all, we live in a world teeming with bacteria -- and though we can, and do, get sick from some of them sometimes, we can be exposed to a lot of bugs with good health. In fact, some microbiologists believe the modern-day pursuit of cleanliness is creating new problems, such as rising rates of allergies.

I won’t put my shoes on the table, though. (It’s unlucky, right?)

--Rosie Mestel

Photo: daviddesign (via Flickr, Creative Commons license)