Researchers from the University of Arizona reported that kitchen towels can cause food poisoning. The towels taken for analysis from ordinary families were just swarming with bacteria.
American scientists claim that every time you wash the dishes, you spread the germs around the house. That is the conclusion they came to after an experiment. The scientists took 82 towels from houses in the five major cities in the USA and Canada. 89% of the collected material contained intestinal bacteria, while 25.6% held E. coli.
According to the scientists, a large number of bacteria come from using the same towel to dry the dishes, hands, and to wipe the surface of the kitchen.
Kitchen towels, as well as sponges, are responsible for cross bacterial contamination. Bacteria get on the hands, utensils, and food. You think that you are just eating while hundreds of thousands of germs are getting inside your body with food, says Kelly Reynolds, one of the researchers at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Reynolds also says that kitchen towels should be washed after each use. If this is not possible, dip them into a weak bleach solution and just hang out to dry. Alternatively, fabric kitchen towels can be simply replaced by disposable ones.