Download Bacterial Growth on Public Restroom Toilet Seats vs. Bacterial

Bacterial Growth on Public Restroom Toilet
Seats vs. Bacterial Growth on Public Restroom
Door Handles: A Microbiological Approach
Jamie J. Larsen
Undergraduate Student (Biology Concentration)
Department of Biology
Tennessee Technological University
Cookeville, TN 38505
Project Summary
 Toilet Seats or Door Handles?
 Determine which surface contains the most
bacteria
 Use cleaner on one of the restrooms tested
to be used as a control
Project Summary (cont’d)
 Obtain toilet seat and door handle samples
in 10 public restrooms
 Public restroom toilet seats will contain the
most bacterial growth
Introduction
 People have come to desire information that
would tell them how to disinfect particular
areas (Ojima et al 2002)
 No one has yet used uniform sampling
conditions to derive bacterial count
distributions (Ojima et al 2002)
Introduction (cont’d)
 The accumulation of this data would lead to
research that could contribute to the
estimation of infection risks for
communicable diseases (Ojima et al 2002)
Objective/Hypothesis
 Objective
– Determine which surface contains the most
bacteria
 Hypothesis
– Public restroom toilet seats will contain the most
bacteria
 Null Hypothesis
– Both the toilet seats and the door handles will
contain the same amount of bacteria
Methods and Materials
 Materials (Goss 2006)
– Data Table
– 10 agar plates (divided in half)
– Sterilized cotton swabs
– Gloves
– Distilled Water
– Permanent Marker (to label plates)
Methods and Materials (cont’d)
 Methods (Goss 2006)
– Swab toilet seats and door handles in ten public
restroom sites
– Clean one site with bathroom cleaner
– Label/Streak agar plates
– Incubate for 48 hours
– Check growth, do colony counts, and analyze
results using the t-test statistic
– Repeat experiment
Expected Results and Benefits
 Expected Results
– Samples taken from public restroom toilet seats
will have the most bacterial growth on them
– Samples taken from public restroom door
handles will have less bacterial growth on them
 Benefits
– Cleaner restrooms in the future
– Raise awareness of possible infections obtained
from public restroom surfaces
Timeline
Budget
Thank You!!
 Thank you for your time and attention!!