It turns out taking your shoes off indoors isn't just good manners in some cultures. It's good hygiene, too. Shoes sometimes carry dangerous bacteria called C. diff, which resulted in 29,000 deaths in 2011. In a study, 26.4 percent of shoe soles tested positive for C. Diff, about three times the number found on the surfaces of bathrooms and kitchens.
From the Wall Street Journal, on the work of Kevin W. Garey of the University of Houston and others:
And that's just one bacterium. In an earlier investigation, Dr. Garey examined past studies to learn if “shoe soles are a vector for infectious pathogens.” The answer was a resounding yes. Among the studies: Austrian researchers found at least 40% of shoes carried Listeria monocytogenes in 2015. And a 2014 German study found that over a quarter of boots used on farms carried E.coli. “Essentially, when you wear your shoes in a house, you are bringing in everything you stepped in during the day,” says Jonathan Sexton, a laboratory manager at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona.
Read Full Article »
