There's really no way to avoid it: Life is gross. Even the most mundane things about your everyday life are, if not necessarily dangerous (though sometimes also dangerous!), potentially absolutely disgusting. Want straight teeth? No you don't. Think pizza is your favorite food? Not any more. Have a belly button? Get rid of it.
Read these seven facts at your own risk and just try to get through the rest of your day without curling up in a ball on the floor of your shower. Actually, come to think of it, that's probably disgusting too.
1. Your belly button is overflowing with bacteria.
There is so much bacteria in your belly button that you could be uniquely identified by the vomit-inducing ecosystem you're harboring. Scientists identified 2,368 species of bacteria after swabbing the navels of just 60 people, and 1,458 of the species "may be new to science." And in the same study, one man was found to harbor bacterium that previously been found only in soil from Japan.
2. The FDA allows 30 fly eggs in every 100 grams of pizza sauce.
If we do the math, 100 grams is equal to 3.5 ounces and there's about 7 ounces of sauce on a typical large pizza pie. Per FDA standards, the government is cool with you scarfing down a maximum of 60 fly eggs when you bite into that pie. While not every pizza is going to have this problem, the fact that the FDA is okay with you consuming any number of fly eggs is stomach churning enough. If you're curious what fly eggs on pizza look like, here are some photos. Who knows how many you've already eaten.
3. Your iPhone contains 18 times more bacteria than a toilet handle.
Mobile phones could have 18 times more bacteria than a toilet handle. Salmonella, fecal matter, and staphylococcus are just a few things you'd probably find. Candy Crush's tagline should be: "Swipe fecal matter around with your fingertips."
4. Retainers can carry yeast pathogens and microbes like MRSA.
If you've ever thought it was all right to simply rinse some water over your retainer before putting it in your mouth, you are absolutely, disgustingly wrong. Your retainer is likely to be teeming with yeast pathogens and antibiotic resistant microbes including MRSA. Suddenly people with crooked teeth just became a lot more appealing make out partners.
5. Contacts are basically just plastic breeding grounds for germs.
According to one survey, only one percent of people wearing contacts use proper hygiene, meaning there's a good chance you're putting biofilm on your eyes. If you've ever hastily put in your contacts without washing your hands or failed to thoroughly wash your contact case at night, then your eyes are just waiting to get infected.
6. You shed 30k-40k skin cells an hour which then pile up as dust.
In a year you can lose EIGHT POUNDS of skin cells which then collect as dust around your home, work desk, or wherever else you hang out. Even more disgusting is that dust mites then come in and live off your dead skin. You are living in a dead skin/dust mite ecosystem in which entire civilizations of mites are being sustained by the extracts of your body. You can lose almost 1,000,000 cells in a day so that's quite a feast.
7. A heap of laundry is an E. coli wonderland.
Transferring your wet laundry into the dryer can cover your hands in E. coli. Washing machines are teeming with bacteria. And if you were to wash a load of just your underwear, there would be about 100 million E. coli floating around in the wash water, which can then be transmitted to the next load, microbiology professor Charles Gerba told ABC News.
Have fun with the rest of your life.
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