This is the dirties item in your home

Kitchen sponge is by far the dirtiest item in the home.

It is even filthier than the toilet seat or the garbage can. - Sponge has a lot of nooks and crannies, so as you clean up a mess with potential pathogens in it, some of the organisms become lodged in between the sponge. People rinse their sponges, but they really need to sanitize them. And that's something people don't do - explains Dr. Philip Tierno, a clinical professor at the Microbiology and Pathology departments at NYU Langone and author of The Secret Life of Germs.

When you wipe food remnants from your dirty dishes, cutting board and countertop, any pathogens from your spills can fill the holes of the damp sponge, which sits sink-side. While the sponge hangs out wet and stagnant until next use, new bacteria grows at the surprising rate of once every 20 minutes. The cutting board is particularly notorious. After you've cut up a piece of raw meat, it's common to wipe off whatever blood and other liquid has collected there -- often ground zero for one of the most common food-poisoning bacteria: salmonella. But that doesn't let vegetarians and vegans off the hook as the vegetables could be contaminated with Escherichia Coli that can cause various infections.
The best sanitizing agent is chlorine bleach. Just make a disinfecting solution by mixing one part bleach with nine parts water and drop the sponge in the mixture from 10 to 30 seconds.

kitchen sponge

sponge

dishcloth

Philip Tierno

dirtiest item in the home