July 23, 2015, by Lindsay Brooke
How clean is your car?
Experts at The University of Nottingham say your car could be dirtier than you think and a potential breeding ground for a host of bugs and bacteria including E. coli , Staphylococcus and mould.
The discovery was made when the University’s Microbiology Investigation Centre was asked to team up with the car buying and selling website Carfused.com who launched their ‘How clean is your car’ campaign today.
After undertaking their own research Carfused.com found that nearly 8% of British drivers admit to having a “dirty” car so they tasked The University of Nottingham to dig deeper and find out what lies beneath the darker recesses of our cars to investigate the state of the nation’s car hygiene.
Carfused.com has teamed up with Kim Woodburn, one half of cleaning duo Kim & Aggie of ‘How Clean is Your House’ fame, to take a look at the hidden dangers of using your car as a rubbish bin, and wake the nation up to the risks of having a dirty motor.
The Microbiology department took swabs from steering wheels, handbrakes, gear sticks, foot wells and car seats to find out just what was lurking underneath. The team, led by Professor Christine Dodd, a food microbiologist in the School of Biosciences, found evidence of E. coli and Staphylococcus.
Professor Dodd said: “We found a lot of things we expected to find like microbes associated with skin, soil and dust. Soft furnishings tended to carry much higher levels and our potential E. coli, a faecal bacterium, came from a child’s car seat. These types of bacteria can get transferred not just through poor personal hygiene but also from animals or even manured soils. High moulds levels were another common finding and could be a problem for some asthma sufferers. Simple cleaning would reduce this and we found wet wipes were very effective on hard surfaces.”
Professor Dodd and her team of microbiologists swabbed 15 cars steering wheels and handbrakes/gear sticks for viable counts and also for pathogenic bacteria. Agar plates were incubated at various temperatures from 25 °C to 35 °C and times specific for each microorganism.
They identified an array of skin community organisms and air/environmental bacteria.
Skin: Staphylococcus, lactic acid bacteria, yeasts
Environmental: A wide variety of moulds and bacteria including Bacillus mycoides
Faecal: a suspect E. coli
From how clean is your house to how clean is your car
Carfused.com has teamed up with Kim Woodburn, one half of cleaning duo Kim & Aggie of ‘How Clean is Your House’ fame, to take a look at the hidden dangers of using your car as a rubbish bin, and wake the nation up to the risks of having a dirty motor.
Kim Woodburn says: “It feels as if so many Brits don’t think twice about chucking their half-drunk bottles of pop under the seat or leaving tissues which they’ve blown their snotty noses in the foot well of their vehicles. I was absolutely horrified to find some of the gunk that was hidden under some drivers’ seats – and it was really worrying to find the presence of a pathogen that could lead to E.coli .”
While the research has found some potential health risks related to having a dirty car, this isn’t the only repercussion motorists are facing. Carfused.com found that nearly one in 10 (9%) say they always have to apologise for the state their car is in, with more than one in 20 (7%) admitting that they are embarrassed by the state of their car.
Keep it clean
Kate Rose, Carfused.com spokesperson, says: “You normally hear stories of people taking real pride in their car, cleaning it every weekend and ensuring it’s immaculate at all times. It’s really worrying to see, then, just how dirty people are letting their cars get. We were expecting to find some bad stuff from the University of Nottingham’s testing but we didn’t expect to find bacteria relating to eColi in there.
“With people across the UK using their cars to transport children and friends, it’s worrying to see that they would let their cars get in such a state. The fact that so many say they only clean the interiors of their car once every three months is really worrying. Brits should be taking better care of their cars. By doing so, they will help protect their precious cargo from any bacteria and illness but they will also go some way to helping keep the vehicles value when it comes to resale.”
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