Beware. A multitude of germs lurk on many surfaces around the home.
Almost every medical or microbe expert in the world will cheerfully tell you the same thing: germs are everywhere, whether you like it or not.
Saunter across the room and you're swimming in a soup of airborne organisms.
Sit on a chair and you're bringing bacteria with you the next time you get up.
"There's very few surfaces that are truly clean," said Dr. Aaron Glatt, president and CEO of New Island Hospital in Bethpage, N.Y., and a spokesman for the Infectious Disease Society of America. "You're almost never going to culture something and not find some germs on it."
And humans are some of the worst germ offenders.
"Ninety percent of you is composed of germ cells," said Phillip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU and author of "The Secret Life of Germs."
Not that people should be overly concerned about becoming ill. According to Tierno, only about 1 to 2 percent of the 60,000 types of germs people come in contact with daily are potentially dangerous to people with normal immunity.
A few precautions -- using disinfectants, hand-washing, and keeping hands away from the face -- should be more than sufficient to avoid illnesses or viruses.
Still, the higher the density of microbes on a particular object, the higher the chances of coming in contact with them as well as coming in contact with potentially harmful ones.
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For those curious souls who want to go the extra mile in understanding just how massive the microorganism populations are in some places, here are a few germy surfaces your cleaning supplies will be happy to get to know.
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