Bacterial Colonization of Students’ Bath Towels in a Tertiary Educational Centre in Owo, Nigeria

Abstract

Bath towels are designed to assimilate profuse amount of moisture and in the process may also absorb microorganisms that are present. These microorganisms remain viable and multiply within the moist towel to become 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 bacterial colonization of bath towels of students in a tertiary educational institution in Owo, Ondo State. Students’ bath towels 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 standard bacteriological media. The cultures were incubated at 37oC overnight before reading. Bacterial counts increased significantly (p<0.05) from 3.4 x 104 in first week of laundry to 2.9 x 108 in towels laundered after three weeks of use. Staphylococcus aureus (74.3%) was the predominant isolate. Escherichia coli (20.2%) was the next frequently recovered microorganism. Other isolates were Klebsiella species (3.7%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (1.8%) was the least recovered organism. The isolates were most susceptible to pefloxacin, except Pseudomonas aeruginosa that had better susceptibility to gentamycin. The high level of bacterial colonization of bath towels with some of the regular microorganisms implicated in most human diseases brings to fore the urgent need for education on the basics of the bath towel hygiene. Keywords: Bath towels, colonization, contamination, hands, infection