Washing dishes: Which is more hygienic - kitchen sponge or dish brush?
Created: 07/21/2022, 16:09
By: Andrea Stettner
Billions of bacteria cavort on dishwashing sponges and brushes, and they can hardly be reduced even with dish soap.
Nevertheless, one of the two is much more hygienic.
Anyone who washes their dishes by hand knows the problem: at some point the dish sponge starts to smell – and really badly.
Bad smells are caused by bacteria.
According to researchers, there are around 54 billion bacteria per cubic centimeter on a sponge.
Is it perhaps more advisable to switch to a dishwashing brush?
Bacteria thrive on a sponge.
A dish brush is more hygienic.
© Westend61/Imago
What is more hygienic for washing dishes - dishwashing sponge or dishwashing brush?
According to molecular biologist Markus Egert from Furtwangen University, there are actually similar numbers of germs on a dishwashing brush as on a kitchen sponge.
“But the brush has the great advantage that it simply dries much more easily and intensively between uses.
And this drying reduces the number of germs very significantly by three or four powers of ten without me having to do anything,” he explains in an interview with
Deutschlandfunk
.
Dishwashing brushes dry faster and are therefore more hygienic than dishwashing sponges.
This is the conclusion of an international study published in the International Journal of Food Microbiology in 2021.
Dishwashing sponges create ideal living conditions for bacteria
The Furtwangen researcher has conducted two studies on the subject of microbes in sponges.
Most people should be aware that the kitchen is teeming with bacteria in many places.
According to Egert, the enormous number of germs on sponges is even comparable to that of the human digestive tract.
This is mainly due to the optimal living conditions that the microbes find on used dishwashing sponges: “The sponge is damp, it has a large surface, there is usually a lot for the microbes to eat and it is not cleaned that often ' he explains further.
Even washing-up liquid can hardly do anything about it.
You forget these spots all the time when cleaning
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Hardly any germs on dishwashing sponges
But the good news is: among the predominant germs on a used dishwashing sponge, there are almost no germs such as salmonella or campylobacter.
The majority consists of water or house bacteria that are harmless to humans, the researcher confirms.
Even fungi or viruses were only found in very small numbers in his studies.
Can I clean the dish sponge?
However, dishwashing sponges are relatively easy to clean and can be reused several times.
To get them hygienically clean, washing them at 60° C once a week is sufficient.
Or you can simply clean your kitchen sponge in the dishwasher.
