No, Your Beard Is Not Full of Poop
You may have seen it on the news: the beards are dirty. So dirty that they have more bacteria in their feces than toilet seats. Put down the razor! This does not mean what you think.
Cutting boards, mobile phones and keyboards contain more fecal bacteria than toilet seats , which microbiologists consider to be one of the cleanest places in the home. Since bacteria are everywhere around us, including species that are also found in our digestive tract (where, by the way, they are usually harmless), you can find “fecal” bacteria almost everywhere you look.
It makes sense to test fecal coliform bacteria (that is, bacteria that are or look like E.coli ) in places like water wells: not because these bacteria always make you sick, but because they indicate that sewage can mix with the plumbing, and this is a plumbing problem that needs to be addressed before any real feedborne diseases (such as norovirus , cholera , salmonella, or rare dangerous versions of E.coli such as O157: H7 ) are found its way in However, some faecal bacteria will appear on surfaces in our homes and workplaces from time to time. You cannot keep all the germs of faeces in the bathroom, no matter how hard you try .
So what about researching those chubby beards? There was no real study, just a news channel washed a few beards and sent samples for testing. (Spotting germs in seemingly unexpected places is a time-honored pastime on TV news.) Beards, however, are fairly clean. We know this from actual scientific research, such as this study published last year in the Journal of Hospital Infections , which showed that bearded hospital workers do not carry more bacteria on their faces than clean-shaven ones. (In fact, they were less likely to carry some potentially disease-causing bacteria.)
Read the full Chicagoist post to learn more about beard cleanliness and how it has been studied in the past. Spoiler alert: chickens were involved.
Stop Attacking Beards With Your Shitty Science | Chicago
Photo by: hairfreaky .
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