If nothing else, the pandemic has taught us a lot about germs, and how to keep them off of us. Hand sanitizer is still everywhere, and people seem a lot more diligent about using it after shopping, before eating, and on public transit.
But there's one place that you might think of as a safe space that turns out to be quite filthy: your car's interior.
A new study out of the U.K. says that the average person's vehicle has "significantly" more bacterial contamination than the average toilet seat.
They swabbed the cars all over, and they found the highest concentrations of bacteria are typically in the trunk. Not sure what people are putting in their trunks, but it's the situation in the car's interior that I thought was more alarming.
The next-Inside the car, the nastiest spot was the driver's seat, followed by the gearshift lever, the back seat (makes sense if you have kids,) and the dashboard -- the knobs, the buttons, and the touch screens.
Surprisingly, the steering wheels had the lowest amounts of bacteria of all the areas they swabbed. That's probably because of all that extra hand sanitizing we're doing, especially, for instance, after we leave the grocery store. I know the first thing I do when I get back in the car is reach for the hand sanitizer and wipe off all those shopping cart germs.
The main takeaway here: Your car can get really gross, especially if you don't clean it regularly. Keep the sanitizer handy!