A COUPLE of months ago, while reading Laughing All The Way To The Mosque by Zarqa Nawaz, I learned that people who do not use toilet paper for cultural or religious reasons, often use hotel kettles to clean up their goodies while on the road. At home they would use a water jug that sits beside the toilet, but, when traveling, the best thing they could find was the plastic kettle that other travelers use to (shockingly) make a cup of tea or coffee.
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Travelers: Here's Why You Should Never Use a Hotel Water Kettle
It grossed me right out. Kitchen utensils should not go anywhere near anyone’s butthole.
But guess what. There is something worse happening to hotel kettles and it can kill you.
Gizmodo reports that people have been putting their dirty underwear inside hotel kettles to boil them clean.
Dr. Heather Hendrickson, a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biosciences at the Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at Massey University in Auckland, explains to Gizmodo that boiling does not kill all microorganism — the Clostridium botulinum (which causes botulism) is one of the resistant ones.
So, not only is it a lazy way to clean your underpants (use soap and water from the sink like everyone else), but it is also gross and dangerous.
Travelers, just don’t use hotel kettles. They’re filthy. 