A national poll last spring found that one out of three Americans do not take their shoes off when entering their home.
Should you take off your shoes when you come home?
A national poll last spring found that one out of three Americans do not take their shoes off when entering their home. Inside Edition wondered how much bacteria someone could track into a house.
Dog walker Brittany Lenhart says she walks the pavement around 10 miles a day and tells Inside Edition she wonders what is on the bottom of her shoes, “every day" of her life.
Inside Edition swabbed the bottom of Lenhart's shoe and also got samples from ballet dancer Emma von Enck and nurse Emily Veldboom. The samples were sent to Micrim Labs in Florida for testing.
Results for Lenhart’s shoe swab showed a bacterial count of 880 million. Five different types of bacteria were found in her sample, two of which are found in feces. Veldboom's results showed a bacteria count of 46 million. Veldboom’s sample had four different types of bacteria, two of those bacteria types are found in feces.
“Oh no, I always try to avoid the poop on the sidewalk,” Veldboom says.
Microbiologist Susan Whittier spoke with Inside Edition.
“If you have young children or babies crawling on those floors or carpets, you obviously don’t want them to be exposed to potentially pathogenic bacteria,” Whittier says.
How much bacteria can get tracked back into your home? Inside Edition had von Enck keep her sneakers on and walked across a carpet with fluorescent paint on her soles. After turning off the lights and shining a UV light on the floor, footprints were shown all over the carpet, looking like a crime scene of germs.
“I will make it a rule. There will be no shoes in the house anymore,” von Enck says.
To keep your house clean, be sure to take off your shoes before you go inside, experts say.
