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The Bottom Line: How often should you clean your water bottle?
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Higher concentrations of microbes are likely to be found at the mouth and cap areas of a water bottle due to their frequent contact with a person’s mouth.
PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO
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SINGAPORE – Owning a reusable water bottle helps you stay hydrated as it is convenient to carry around. It also cuts down on single-use plastic. But how often do you need to wash it to make sure you are not gulping down possibly harmful bacteria as well?
On average, a reusable water bottle contains 20.8 million colony-forming units of bacteria, which is more than 40,000 times that of a toilet seat with 515 colony-forming units. Colony-forming units refer to the number of living microbes on a surface. Microbes are microscopic organisms that include bacteria, viruses and fungi.
