Cycling is good for your health. And if you don’t have your own, you can get by with a share bike in many places. But this poses an invisible risk. As a study has now found, both the rental bikes and their popular alternatives, the e-scooters, are real germ spreaders – and even surpass the toilet!
They are a common sight, especially in cities: bicycles and scooters that can be rented using an app. Popular means of transport, but which pose an invisible threat to health. Because, as an investigation has now found out, share bikes and scooters house a veritable army of bacteria. They even have 1000 times more than a toilet seat.
course of the investigation
Testers conducted three swab tests on personal and publicly owned bikes and scooters. That is, they took three samples from the surfaces of the objects. So-called KBE was determined for each smear.1 A colony-forming unit (CFU) is a microorganism that forms a colony, in this case on a surface. CFU is a quantity used to quantify living organisms.2 The Gram stain method was also used to identify the type of bacteria.3
So many bacteria are on share bikes and scooters
The evaluation showed that a share bike has an average of 800 times more bacteria than a private e-bike and 12,000 times more than on a toilet seat. The result for Share e-scooters is even worse. They have 700 times more germs than privately owned scooters and 58,000 times more than a toilet seat!
Of course, it is not surprising at first that bikes and scooters that are shared by many people are more contaminated than those that someone owns and uses privately. What is surprising is the level of pollution, especially when compared to less polluted private transport and even to the toilet.
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What types of bacteria are on the surfaces?
Application of the aforementioned Gram stain revealed that the type of germs found on Share bikes and scooters differ. If bacteria turn blue during the method, this means that they are gram-positive bacteria. The testers found these mainly on the e-scooters. Gram-positive bacteria can cause serious illnesses including diphtheria, Milzbrand or pneumococcal infections.
If bacteria turn red, they are gram-negative bacteria – these were found particularly frequently on the e-bikes tested. These can include lung infectionurinary tract infection, blood poisoning or Meningitis trigger.4
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Wear gloves and/or wash hands
Due to their contamination, the Share means of transport also pose a risk of infection during waves of flu or other illnesses. People who use them are therefore advised to wear gloves and wash their hands thoroughly afterwards.
limitation of the investigation
However, it is important to mention who conducted the research: Velotric – an e-bike manufacturer that has an interest in people buying their own e-bikes instead of sharing them. In addition, the number of smears was not large and the analysis method was not valid enough (there is no statistical method) to be representative.
However, there is no harm in protecting yourself against possible bacteria by wearing gloves and/or washing your hands.