Water is the Elixir of Life, and many of us wouldn’t dream of being without our favorite water bottle. We take them to work, to school, to the gym, and many other places.
A new study, however, might offer some disturbing revelations about the type of water bottle you use and how susceptible it is to germs and bacteria. As it turns out, drinking water from an oft-used water bottle could be detrimental to your health.
The study was carried out by “Treadmill Reviews” and had athletes use an assortment of reusable water bottles. These bottles were used for a week with no washing.
At the end of the study, researchers swabbed the bottles to capture bacteria and compared these swabs taken from items around the home. Comparison items included kitchen sinks and chew toys for dogs.
The results of the comparison were eye-opening to say the least.On average, reusable water bottles had 313,499 colony-forming units per square centimeter on their surface. In contrast, the average germs found on a dog’s chew toy were 2,937 CFU.
A typical kitchen sink has 3,191 CFU while the bowl your dog drinks its water from is cleaner than your water bottle with only 37,383 CFU. That’s right. Your dog is drinking cleaner water than you are.
There was one bright revelation from the study. A straw-topped bottle only has 25 CFU on average. The downside of that number is that the average toilet seat has 27 CFU, making straw-topped bottles only a shade better.
