Your Steering Wheel Is The Most Germ Infested Surface In Your Car
Only 1 out of 3 people clean their car interiors once a year.
That leaves 66% of the car driving population with dirty car interiors. How many of those cars actually cleaned are truly clean, like disinfected clean?
That’s a pretty sad statistic for something we spend so much time in, second to our home or work. As a matter of fact, AAA conducted a study which reveals that the average American spends approximately 17,600 minutes driving each year. “That’s equivalent to seven 40-hour weeks at the office,” says Jurek Grabowski, research director for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016/09/americans-spend-average-17600-minutes-driving-year/
12% of people admitted to never cleaning the interior of their cars.
Consider that there are approximately 700 different strains of bacteria living in the average vehicle at any given time. Once again, seven hundred, different strains of bacteria could be living in your car right now. It is virtually impossible to have zero percent.
Food is a huge factor in keeping and spreading those strains around your car. From the burger you had on the go to the rogue french fry, greasy fingers, dog slobber or baby formula splatter, it’s all germ food.
Few people realize that there are spaces inside of your car that are more contagious than a toilet seat based on CFU (colony-forming units).
The average steering wheel was found to have 630 CFU’s per square centimetre. That was the worst space in the entire car and worst than some of these other places:
- That’s six times more than the average cell phone at 100 CFU
- That’s four times as disgusting than a public toilet seat at 172 CFU
- That’s two times worse than a public elevator button at 315 CFU
Many of these contagions don’t necessarily come from you, the kids or the family pet but instead they are cross contaminated by things associated to driving a vehicle or errands made while driving a vehicle.
Things such as the gas pump handle and pump keypads to ATM touch-pads, door and shopping cart handles and the list goes on.
Let’s not even get into rental cars and taxis right now. I’ll save that for another blog coming soon. But in a nutshell on that side-note, cars from ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are dirtier than taxis, rentals, and even toilet seats, according to a study that collected bacteria from 9 vehicles.
My one advice on that matter, don’t touch the window buttons!!!
In summary, the best form of protection is to maintain good hand washing practices, car cleaning measures and manage your space with an external probiotic products.