The Nasty Facts About Public Car Vacuums

If you use a public vacuum to clean your car, you may be doing a lot more harm than good.

According to a lab study commissioned by Panda Hub, self-serve vacuums—the kind you’d typically find at car wash facilities or gas stations—are loaded with all manner of bacteria, some of it potentially dangerous.

The list includes, ahem, fecal matter. If you’re unsure what that means, the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it as “solid waste passed out of the body of a human or animal through the bowels.” Poop, in other words.

Key Findings from the lab study:

Every single swabbed vacuum had higher than average amounts of microbes that can cause sickness:

• • Listeria
  • E. coli
  • Mixed Coliforms
  • Staphylococcus
  • Pseudomonas

Several vacuums had high amounts of coliforms and E. coli presence, strongly indicating a presence of fecal matter.

How much fecal matter, you ask? According to the report, the swab from the most contaminated vacuum tested contained more fecal matter than most toilet seats. When you consider what’s likely on the bottom of the shoes you wear, and that those shoes are regularly grinding their soles into your car’s carpet, the results aren’t actually that surprising. But still gross.

The study also includes statistics on how many people regularly use the poopy vacuums.

• 58% of surveyed car owning Americans claimed self serve vacuums were part of their car cleaning routine. From over 212M registered drivers, this would amount to over 123 million Americans.
• 32% of respondents said they would use self-serve car vacuums on a daily or weekly basis. This would amount to over 67 million Americans.

What’s more, 173 million Americans are using their cars to deliver food. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to head out and buy that little handheld car vacuum we’ve had our eye on.

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