Can we be too clean?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To be healthy you need to be clean – or so we’ve thought throughout human history.
The dazzling array of antibacterial products that exploded onto the scene in the 20th century took things to the next level, with their promises of eliminating 99.9% of germs.
But could an obsession with cleanliness actually be bad for us? There’s a whole world of microbes out there: some make us sick, but others are essential for our health.
How do we tell the difference? Listener Younes’s question gives CrowdScience the chance to sift the good dirt from the bad, with the help of hygiene expert Professor Sally Bloomfield. Along the way we soap up our hands with schoolchildren in Mumbai, get knee deep in mud on an English farm, and find out why snuggling up to a cow might be a good idea.
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Cathy Edwards and Marijke Peters
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, you have chosen to download an edition of Crowd Science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.7 | On behalf of the team, I'd like to congratulate you on your excellent taste. |
| 0:09.7 | Happy listening and if you are inspired to ask us a science question you want answered on life, the universe, anything, details are at the end of the show. |
| 0:20.0 | This week's show is all about cleanliness and it's a particularly pertinent topic at the moment because I've got one of the seasonal lurgies and my aim at the moment is not to spread my germs around the office. |
| 0:32.0 | Anyway, listener Eunice has asked us a question, so over to him to take it away. |
| 0:37.6 | Hello, you're listening to Crowd Science from the BBC, answering your questions about life, the universe and everything. |
| 0:46.1 | Today the question comes from me, you know Sahmed in the West Bank. I want to know, are we too obsessed |
| 0:51.4 | with cleanliness and is this affecting our health? |
| 0:55.0 | Thanks Eunice, a question that got the crowd science Facebook buzzing. |
| 1:03.0 | While some folks shared just how careful they are with hygiene, |
| 1:07.0 | in order to avoid illness, others are convinced we're too clean for our own good. |
| 1:12.0 | So who's right? We're determined to find out, which is why we're in the |
| 1:15.9 | front line a key battleground in the hygiene wars. Yes, it's the glamorous setting of the public toilets at a British train station. We're just |
| 1:25.2 | about to get on a train to find some answers in rural England but before we go I |
| 1:30.0 | want to see what producer Kathy's tolerance for dirt is. I've got our breakfast in my |
| 1:35.4 | rock sack. If I dropped it on the floor, would you pick it up and eat it? |
| 1:40.7 | Appetizing. I think even though the floor has been recently moped, probably not. No, not in here. |
| 1:46.4 | Fair enough. How about you? No, not really. In fact, I've got a very strong urge to wash my hands and then not touch anything again until we're |
| 1:53.8 | safely on the train. Where were we going? Well I thought to answer this question |
| 1:58.4 | we should get knee-deep in mud so we're going to a farm see if they're obsessed |
| 2:01.7 | with cleanliness there or not and then happily just |
| 2:04.9 | round the corner lives a hygiene expert so I thought we'd see if she had any |
... |
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