Your Hotel Room Is Entirely Full Of Germs — Here’s What To Do About It

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Bad news, travelers. Your hotel room is disgustingly germy. And if you thought you knew that, check yourself. It’s a lot worse than you realized.

Let’s sink straight into the scary stats. According to a recent study, even just flushing the toilet can spread germs all over your hotel room. A 2012 study found that 81 percent of hotel surfaces have fecal bacteria on them. (Yeah, that’s exactly what you think it means.)

So what is going wrong? Yes, hotel staff clean the rooms between guests. Your sheets get washed. Your towels, too. But cleaning is one thing. You know what’s missing? Disinfecting.

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Cleaning gets rid of the mess you can see. You’ll know if your hotel room wasn’t cleaned. But you probably can’t tell if your room was disinfected. And turns out, some hotel cleaning processes actually spread germs from one surface to another.

For instance, if a bathroom has some nasty bacteria on the back of the toilet and hotel staff “cleans” the room with the same scrub brush as the next room, that gross bacteria now is in two rooms. You can imagine how that amplifies in a hotel with hundreds of rooms.

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The best solution is to disinfect anything you touch with your mouth — like glasses and mugs. Then do the same for anything you touch, like light switches, TV remotes and sinks, which have some of the worst bacteria and germs. Because keep in mind, after you touch something, there’s a good chance your hands will come in contact with your face (like when you floss).

P.S. Although your sheets get washed, that bedspread might not always get its due. Maybe skip cuddling up in it.

[h/t Travel and Leisure]