If you're going to cook, then you're going to need to do dishes. And if you need to do dishes, chances are you're going to need to use a sponge, which gets dirty. And apparently some of you have thought the best way to make the sponge cleaner after use is to blast it with radiation in a microwave. Turns out you were only making things worse, though, so stop doing that for your own sake.
It turns out, per the Times, that microwaving your dirty sponge will not renew its cleaning powers like Bruce Banner getting pumped full of gamma radiation. It will merely kill the weakest bacteria in the sponge, leaving the strongest bacteria to stay alive and angry, like the Hulk on some kind of rampage invisible to the naked eye.
And there are tons and tons of bacteria running around your disgusting sponge, it turns out. A team of German microbiologists who studied a bunch of filthy sponges found that 362 different species of bacteria lived on them, with 82 billion crammed into just a cubic inch.
"That's the same density of bacteria you can find in human stool samples," Dr. Markus Egert told the paper. Thanks, doc.
So what are you supposed to do if you don't want a super race of bacteria growing in your kitchen sink? Egert told the paper that any attempt to clean sponges just makes things worse, by leaving the strongest bacteria behind. So instead, you should change up your sink sponge every week.
Just remember, no matter where you are and what you do, nature is finding a way (to kill you). Bon appétit!
