Even the microwave oven in your kitchen is not immune to bacteria.
The irradiating environment within a microwave oven might seem inhospitable to microbes. But swabs from microwave ovens in several different locales identified over 100 bacterial strains, researchers report August 7 in Frontiers in Microbiology. This is the first time that scientists have documented microbial communities living in microwave ovens, according to the researchers.
Microbiologist Manuel Porcar and colleagues swabbed the insides — including the walls and rotating platter — of 30 microwave ovens that were being actively used in three different settings: 10 from kitchens, 10 from labs and 10 from other shared spaces such as cafeterias. The swabbed samples were then transferred to lab dishes, all of which led to significant bacterial growth.