Bacteria on the soles of your shoes != you get sick. Some germs (limited numbers) may actually be good for you.

When I was in high school, a certain friend came over to visit and he was shocked, shocked I tell you, that we were strictly a shoes-on household, and none of us had ever given it much thought; that's just how we lived, with our shoes on. Shortly after that, we would remodel our home and expose a lot of bare wood flooring, which is unpleasant if you're barefoot, I must say! We were also cat-owners (mostly indoor cats), and my mother would constantly shame me in advance, every time I wanted to trim my nails, that I must never leave a scrap of nail to fly onto the floor, because she would inevitably find it, as she was the "barefoot outlier" of our typically shoes-on policy.

Living alone for the last 30 years, I gradually developed a strictly shoes-off household. I've found it's easier to organize my shoes if they're doffed in one place by the door, and as a renter, I prefer to keep a clean carpet, because landlords don't really clean them, they only replace them after disasters. So a tenant's carpet tends to just accumulate nasty stains until it's unusable.

However, my fiancée came in from Barcelona and she was appalled at my barefoot habits! She said it would never do at her home! She immediately found slippers for me to wear, and that was a lot of trouble, because I am not accustomed to wearing slippers and I tended to slip out of them at all times. But she owned a cat, and cats tend to leave little surprises on the floor for us to find with our feet. And I'm unsure whether that's why fiancée wanted to enforce slipper-wearing, but it sure was a big deal for her.

I was mid way through my evening floor-lick, took my normal 5m HN break, and I see this. Will make sure people take their shoes off!

I use public restrooms. Get on public transport, walk on curbs with dried piss...i get that "shoes on/off" is mainly cultural (mideast/asian - off, anglo - mainly on)...) But are folks really that gross? I get immunity building, but i do like some baseline hygeine.

I get that shoes off is supposedly cleaner, but how does much difference does that make if one has a cat or dog as well?

We are a mostly shoes off for ourselves, but do what you want for guests.

I thought it was about foot health, as in "it cannot be healthy to wear shoes all the time". For me any time I can get out of my shoes I feel deep relief and it feels as if my feet can "finally breathe freely again" and I feel "more grounded" if my feet can feel the floor (yes, even with slippers).

What about shoes-off and everyone getting athletes foot?

> 96% of shoes tested positive for coliform bacteria, which is commonly found in faecal matter

This is given to us a a shocking statistic, but it reminds me of the Mythbusters toothbrush test. They were testing whether you should keep your toothbrush nearer to or further from the toilet in your bathroom, to prevent it becoming exposed to airborne coliform bacteria when the toilet is flushed.

So they attached brushes along the wall at a variety of distances, put a control brush in another part of the house, in the kitchen, waited a week and tested them.

Fecal coliform bacteria were found in all the brushes in the bathroom, which appeared to show there was no safe distance from the toilet. But it was also found in the control. The lesson I took from this is that it's everywhere.

So it may well be detectable on 96% of outdoor shoes but I bet it's already all over your house anyway.

Incidentally the guardian seems to run an article/opinion piece like this every few years, that exposes that indoor shoe-wearing is a "proven health risk" by showing what's on shoes, or what can be tracked into the house on them. But they are always missing the crucial piece of evidence on health outcomes - OK, you've shown that shoes have got some nasties on them, but you crucially haven't linked the wearing of shoes in the house to levels of these things that are known to cause issues, or to worse health in general.

They always make me think "So.... that's probably OK then?" much like the stats about the bacterial load that is to be found on workers' desks and how it's worse than the average toilet seat! OK, interesting factoid, but so many people do eat lunch at their desks anyway, and I'm not aware of any desk-related deaths or epidemics of food poisoning so ... it's probably OK?