Hotel Rooms Could Make You Sick

When you stay overnight in a hotel room, you expect to get some sleep. But could that room also be getting you sick?

It's basically because some parts of the hotel room could be more contaminated than you'd think. Unfortunately that contamination comes from a bad source, fecal matter. But it's not the toilet in the hotel room that's the most contaminated. It's a couple of things most of us touch every time we are staying in one of the rooms, the TV remote and the bedside lamp switch.

A new study out of the University of Houston checked out hotel rooms to see what areas were most contaminated and what they were contaminated with. It turns out that even though the toilet and sinks were dirty, they weren't as contaminated as the remote or some of the light switches.

When the researchers looked at what types of contamination was most common, they found that 81% of all surfaces had fecal matter on them. As gross as this sounds, that fecal matter comes from poor bathroom hygeine. Some of the cleaner surfaces were the headboards and surprisingly the bathroom door handles.

But because of the areas that were contaminated, the concern is that the contamination might cause problems, especially in those with weakened immune system issues.

Although this doesn't necessarily apply to every hotel room, it's another good reason to make sure we wash our hands, especially before eating, while out on the road.