Publications

Bath towels are designed to assimilate profuse amount of moisture and in the process may also absorbmicroorganisms that are present. These microorganisms remain viable and multiply within the moist towel tobecome vehicles for the transmission of infectious agents especially through contaminated hands to food,household items and the surrounding environment. The study was intended to know the level of bacterialcolonization of bath towels of students in a tertiary educational institution in Owo, Ondo State. Students’ bathtowels were swabbed with cotton wool-tipped swab sticks and teased into 5 mL sterile 0.85% sodium chloride.This was diluted ten-folds serially: 10-1, 10-2, 10-3... 10-10, and 0.1 mL each was inoculated onto standardbacteriological media. The cultures were incubated at 37oC overnight before reading. Bacterial counts increasedsignificantly (p<0.05) from 3.4 x 104 in first week of laundry to 2.9 x 108 in towels laundered after three weeksof use. Staphylococcus aureus (74.3%) was the predominant isolate. Escherichia coli (20.2%) was the next frequentlyrecovered microorganism. Other isolates were Klebsiella species (3.7%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (1.8%) wasthe least recovered organism. The isolates were most susceptible to pefloxacin, except Pseudomonas aeruginosathat had better susceptibility to gentamycin. The high level of bacterial colonization of bath towels with someof the regular microorganisms implicated in most human diseases brings to fore the urgent need for educationon the basics of the bath towel hygiene.Keywords: Bath towels, colonization, contamination, hands, infection.