Maybe we should call them “agitators.”
In a study, researchers dissected and closely analyzed 10 pacifiers used by babies with no known health problems. What they discovered was that half of them were contaminated with bacteria, yeast and mold. More specifically they harbored millions of “colony forming units” of 40 different types of bacteria per gram, including strains of staph.
“Pacifiers breed biofilms, a slimy slick of bacteria that can affect the healthy balance of microbes in a baby’s mouth, according to a study presented recently at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP).”
These slippery “contaminants,” as they are being called, offer more than just the “ick” factor. They have been linked to childhood illnesses, including colic and allergies, that have the potential to make a baby anything but calm.
The study’s chief investigator, Dr. R. Tom Glass, thinks parents should be alerted to fact that pacifiers can harbor disease-causing germs and that the very item parents use to soothe their child might possibly be contributing to that child’s fussiness.
Not wanting to scare new parents who see pacifiers as the key to their sanity, Dr. Glass offers some advice on how to avoid pacifier contamination:
The most important, and obvious, advice, involves washing pacifiers often– with baking soda solution or denture soak–if possible, especially after they have fallen on the ground. He doesn’t, however, condone the popular method of using your own mouth to clean them with:
“Popping them in your mouth to clean them off before returning them to baby isn’t advisable, but Glass acknowledged that mom or dad’s mouth is preferable to their sleeve.”
He also recommends throwing out pacifiers that are more than two weeks old:
“It’s less expensive to have many pacifiers than to have a sick baby,” he says.
A new binky every two weeks? Does this guy work for Avent?
The advice to clean your pacifier seems like common sense to me. That said, while neither of my kids took any interest in binkies, I’ve been known to practice the three-second rule with food and toys and imagine I might have done the same with pacifiers. And I definitely might have been tempted to use my mouth, rather than my shirt, for a cleaning agent.
And, as an avid lifetime thumb sucker, I’m curious how a thumb compares to a pacifier when it comes to contamination. The good thing about thumbs is you can’t drop them on the bathroom floor. Fortunately, researchers don’t dissect thumbs to determine how much bacteria they harbor.
Did you or do you use pacifiers? What’s your pacifier hygiene etiquette?
Time to kill? Check out this binky slide show.