Surprisingly, 9 out of 10 people think that having a tidy home is hygienic. In fact, neatness and order have little impact, even though untidiness encourages an accumulation of dirt and germs in hard-to-clean places. To reduce health risks, the only answer is to kill germs with effective cleaning methods and products.
Despite some minor cultural differences, the majority of Europeans know the basic rule for good hygiene at home is to wash hands regularly.
It is also surprising that, whereas food poisoning cases have risen by 400% in some part of Europe since the beginning of the 1980s, about 15 million Europeans do not know that good domestic hygiene plays an important part in preventing illness. Although the figures represent only 5% of those questioned, such lack of awareness is all the more unexpected if one considers it was more than a century ago that Louis Pasteur made his discoveries about the growth and spread of germs, and their role in contamination.
When the survey asked to pinpoint what part of the house people thought harbours most germs, a gap showed up between knowledge and behaviour. The general consensus is that, more than worktops and towels, home toilets contain the highest concentration of germs.