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Earlier this week we wrote about why you definitely need to cut off your tatty old festival wristbands.
And now we're being told that our reusable water bottles are absolutely fucking filthy, too.
TreadmillReviews.net conducted a study, looking at 12 reusable water bottles and the results are pretty grim. The team found that slide-top water bottles are the worst and are covered in 900,000 colony-forming units per square centimetre (that's the lovely term they use for the bacteria), which, they say, is worse than licking your dog's toy. I haven't got a dog, so I don't know what that means for me. Licking the toilet? I have one of them.
Anyway, this was followed by squeeze-top bottles, with 162,000 CFU/sq cm and screw top bottles with around 160,000 CFU/sq cm, which they think is the same as eating from your pet's food bowl. Not sure why all their comparisons are based on pets - I feel a bit like they're just picking on our four-legged friends here.
Although some of the bacteria was harmless, they also found bacteria that can cause skin infections and blood poisoning. Shit.
I manage to avoid all this by only drinking rum, but if you are a fan of reusing your water bottle then the experts reckon the best thing to do is to invest in a stainless steel one, don't leave it part full for long periods of time and make sure you put it through the dishwasher as often as you can.
Words Claire Reid
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