Sorry, But Your Kitchen Towel Is Probably Disgusting

Pretty much every home kitchen I have ever been in contained a kitchen towel or two. The vast majority of them looked pretty clean, but scientific research suggests otherwise. A study published in Food Protection Trends examined 82 kitchen towels taken from homes across five cities in the United States and Canada. Unlike other studies, this one didn't just measure the bacteria living on the towel's surface but also those within the towel. The results were shocking: 89% of the kitchen towels tested positive for coliform bacteria — bacteria that are found in human waste. Over a quarter of the sampled towels were also found to harbor E. coli bacteria. (Both of these bacteria have also been found on soda fountains.)

A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research found that kitchen towels consistently ranked as one of the two most bacterially infected places in the kitchen (the other was wet areas near the sink.) A further study also published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research found that kitchen towels also contained Staphylococcus, a bacteria that infects the skin, causing it to swell and blister. To put it more bluntly, most kitchen towels are actually pretty gross, even if they aren't always the most contaminated thing in your kitchen.

Given the statistics listed above, you might be wondering how you can keep your kitchen towels a bit cleaner than average. One of the ways is quite simple: wash them regularly. In the paper that was published by Food Protection Trends, scientists reported that there were fewer E. coli bacteria on kitchen towels that were washed more regularly. In fact, some experts advise washing kitchen towels every day and immediately after they've been contaminated with food, especially raw meat. That being said, a more impactful way of cleaning your kitchen towels is to soak them in a mixture of bleach and water for a couple of minutes. (Bear in mind that, unless your kitchen towels are white, this will discolor them.)

To make your kitchen as sterile as possible, it is best to do away with kitchen towels and replace them with paper towels instead. (You should also ditch your knife block.) Paper towels are more hygienic than kitchen towels because they are discarded after every use. That said, the improvements in hygiene offered by paper towels should be weighed against the larger impact they have on the environment.