On a kitchen knife hidden deadly infections

For those who do not like to wash dishes, and for people with weakened immune systems usual kitchen utensils - knives and graters for vegetables can be formidable enemies. In your own kitchen, as it turned out, they can be used to pick up even hepatitis.

American scientists from the Centre for Food Safety of the University of Georgia conducted an experiment with new knives and graters. With their help, researchers butchered several fruits and vegetables: cucumbers, strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, cantaloupe melon and ordinary. All fruits were deliberately infected with hepatitis A virus and norovirus - experts set out to test how "contagious" in this case may be kitchen appliances.

As it turned out, when cut with a kitchen knife products infected with a dangerous virus, its blade can actually be disease-causing germs. In more than half of the knives and graters used in the experiment, have themselves become a source of spread of the virus. The man would not even suspect that cooking dinner, he became a target for infection.

Scientists do not accidentally chosen for contaminated products hepatitis A and norovirus. Hepatitis A - is the most common in the world of viral infection causing inflammation of the liver. Some people, especially in children, hepatitis A may be asymptomatic, and therefore the disease can be misdiagnosed or even go unnoticed. Sometimes, severe liver failure provoked hepatitis A can lead to coma and death. Norovirus was named last year, the main cause of food poisoning in the United States: by ingestion of even a small number of noroviruses occur vomiting or diarrhea. According to study co-author Marilyn Erickson, the test results should alert in the first place, people with weakened immune systems. They need to do the dishes and devices carefully after every meal.

The experiment of American researchers - not the first test of household life for purity. So, scientists from the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) has already stated that consumer electronics, available in every home becomes a haven for ekstremotolerantnyh fungi, including the so-called black yeasts. Some of them are potentially dangerous to human health. Particularly fond of mushrooms dishwashers and washing machines, and coffee makers. Also among the dirtiest things in the kitchen they found themselves on the results of various studies - cutting board, a sponge for washing dishes and kitchen towel.

Clean house

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