Your toothbrush is probably contaminated with your roommate’s poop!

According to a new study carried out by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., if you share a bathroom with other people, it is highly likely that your toothbrush is contaminated with some other person's fecal matter, not even your own.

Fox News reported that in order to conduct the study, researchers at Quinnipiac University collected toothbrushes from undergraduate students' shared bathrooms and studied the samples. The results were quite staggering; more than 60 percent of toothbrushes had fecal matter on them and 80 percent of the time the contamination was from someone else's feces.

The findings of the study have been presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans. Researchers noted that two bacteria species like Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonadaceae were mainly responsible for toothbrush contamination. The two species are normally found in human gut flora but some forms of those may cause disease.

One of the researchers of the study noted that the main concern was not with the presence of one's own fecal matter on  toothbrush, but rather when a toothbrush was contaminated with fecal matter from somebody else, which contains germs like bacteria, viruses or parasites that are not part of your normal flora, Fox news reported.

Researchers, in order to prevent such contamination, advised not sharing toothbrushes, replacing toothbrushes every three months, rinsing toothbrushes thoroughly with tap water afterwards and letting them air dry. They also noted that toothbrush caps or keeping toothbrushes in closed spaces are actually more harmful than protective.

It is also noted that using a toothbrush cover doesn't protect a toothbrush from bacterial growth, but actually creates an environment which encourages bacterial growth bacteria  by keeping the bristles moist and not allowing the head of the toothbrush to dry out between uses.