Biologists find harmful bacteria on toys, books and cribs, even after cleaning

When researchers in Buffalo tested toys in a daycare center for two of wintertime’s nastiest bugs, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Streptococcus pyogenes, they were surprised to find the pathogens hanging around on toys, books and other surfaces hours after closing time — and after a thorough cleaning. Four out of five stuffed toys tested positive for the pathogen that commonly causes pneumonia, even though it had been hours since the last human contact.

The conventional wisdom about such bacteria, confirmed by many laboratory studies, is that they don’t survive long outside the human body. But the University of Buffalo tests showed the opposite. The problem with lab studies, the researchers now hypothesise, is that those tests were done in controlled environments and on bacteria growing media, instead of on real-world surfaces, where the bugs form long-lasting biofilms. The results of the study were published in the journal Infection and Immunity.