Should you, or shouldn't you, ask your guest to take off their shoes? Are shoe bacteria something we should really be worried about in our homes? Here's what science tells us.
To start with, there's no point to deny the fact: the average shoe holds hundreds of thousands of bacteria per square inch.
But exactly what types of bacterial communities are hanging out on our shoes, and do they pose a health threat? Almost all shoes were coated with Escherichia coli. While many types of Escherichia coli are harmless to humans, some strains can cause serious diseases. Other studies have also found evidence of things like Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause a wide range of skin diseases, and more worryingly, diseases of the blood and the heart.
Despite it’s horrifying to find that bacteria are everywhere and spread quickly, we needn’t worry about it. The load of bacteria our shoes bring indoors isn't much enough to make the average healthy person sick. For a healthy person, bacteria on shoes likely bring no or tiny risk.
Another point is that most of us don't spend a lot of time on the ground, where shoe bacteria stay. The exposure makes the poison. So if you're not exposed to it, you're not going to get sick from it. In some cases, layers of bacteria coating the floor can enter the air we breathe, which might increase infection risk. But the greatest threat really lies on the ground.
And it's worth remembering that bacteria exist elsewhere than on our shoes. In fact, we live in a bacterial soup that would be impossible to completely get rid of them.
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