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Some of the highest levels of bacterial contamination in hotel rooms were found on the TV remote and the bedside lamp switch, a study from the University of Houston says.
Furthemore, some other highly contaminated surfaces were the toilet and the bathroom sink, according to the study.
However, some of the highest levels of contamination were found in items from housekeepers’ carts. That concerns the UH researchers because of the risk for cross-contamination between rooms.
Suprisely, the lowest levels of contamination were found on bed headboards, curtain rods and bathroom door handles.
“Currently, housekeeping practices vary across brands and properties with little or no standardization industry wide,” Katie Kirsch, a UH undergraduate student who presented the study, said in a statement. “The current validation method for hotel room cleanliness is a visual assessment, which has been shown to be ineffective in measuring levels of sanitation.”
Housekeepers clean an average of 14 to 16 rooms per eight-hour shift, spending about 30 minutes on each room, Kirsch said.
The study, conducted by researchers at the UH, Purdue University and the University of South Carolina, tested the levels of total aerobic bacteria and fecal bacterial contamination on 19 surfaces in nine rooms within Texas, Indiana and South Carolina.
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