Do you reuse your water bottle? It could be making you sick

“Additionally, water bottles without crevices and tough-to-clean spots are less likely to host germs”.

The results did vary depending on the type of bottle you use and were broken down as follows.

Based on the findings, more than 300,000 colony-forming units of bacteria per square centimetre (CFU/sq cm) could be found in your water bottle.

The highest germ content was noticed in slide-top where over 900,000 colony-forming units per square centimeter were present.

These types of germs have been known to cause conditions such as pneumonia and blood infections in health care settings, and they can even resist antibiotics. Next was the squeeze-top at 161,971, and then the screw-top at 159,060.

Straw-top bottles came out the cleanest, containing a tiny 25 CFU/sq cm.

‘This may be because water drips to the bottom of the straw rather than sticking around to attract moisture-loving germs, ‘ the website said.

After seeing the results, the site has advised people to choose straw-top bottles.

We bet Karlie doesn’t wash her water bottle enough, either…

The average number of CFUs on the 12 water bottles sampled (three for each design) was 313,499.

A report published in GEO informed, “Researchers in the USA have discovered those bottles could potentially make you sick”.

To put things in perspective, the average toilet seat has about 27 CFU/sq cm.

Swabs were taken from the lids of reusable bottles which had been used without cleaning for a week.

They found that the bottle with the most bacteria was worse than a toilet seat. This compares with 2,937 found on the average dog’s toy and 3,191 in a kitchen sink. To make matters worse, 60% of the germs found were able to make people sick.

Firstly, don’t use a slide-top bottle as it was found to be the worst for germs, with 933,340 CFU per square cm.

Instead of re-using bottles, Treadmill Review recommends purchasing a stainless steel canteen or flask, never leaving it partly full for a length of time and running it through the dishwasher as frequently as possible. All in all, it’s probably time you binned that trusty Evian bottle.