--- title: Subways Are Full of Mouth Microbes and Skin Bacteria description: Mouth microbes and skin bugs ride for free on the Boston city subway, find Harvard researchers in a new study on germs and bacteria canonical: https://time.com/4387257/subways-bacteria-microbes/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-29T15:40:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T22:55:57.213Z article:section: Health og:title: Subways Are Full of Bacteria But Don't Freak Out og:description: Mouth microbes and skin bugs ride for free on the Boston city subway, find Harvard researchers in a new study on germs and bacteria og:url: https://time.com/4387257/subways-bacteria-microbes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt05613355f83fb9b5/69889a1fab6d7791d86aa456/subway.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: subway og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Subways Are Full of Bacteria But Don't Freak Out twitter:description: Mouth microbes and skin bugs ride for free on the Boston city subway, find Harvard researchers in a new study on germs and bacteria twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt05613355f83fb9b5/69889a1fab6d7791d86aa456/subway.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Subways Are Full of Bacteria But Don't Freak Out > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 29, 2016 3:40 PM UTC  Steve Kelley—Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 29, 2016 3:40 PM UTC The subway is a germaphobe’s nightmare: the steep stairs that dare you not to hold the handrail, the ticket-vending touchscreen tacky with fingerprints, the smush of people packed together, all with questionable levels of hygiene. This must mean that subway cars are just as packed with [microbes](http://time.com/3823925/dust-microbes-forensics/?iid=sr-link8). But should we be worried? A group of researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health wanted to find out, so they took a bunch of trips on the Boston city [subway](http://time.com/3697797/new-york-city-subway-germs-bacteria-dna/?iid=sr-link1) and started swabbing. In their new [study](http://msystems.asm.org/content/1/3/e00018-16) published in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal _mSystems_, the scientists report on what they found when they sampled the seats, seat backs, walls, poles, ticketing machines and hanging straps on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. They were amazed at how much the city subway looks, microbially speaking, like a mosaic of humans. The most dominant bacteria on all of the surfaces were from people’s skin and mouths. And the kinds of colonies that thrived in certain places, like hanging grips, depended on how that surface is used: the scientists found enriched colonies of breathing-borne bacteria on touchscreens and vaginal bacteria on fuzzy polyester seats. Happily, though, the scientists didn’t find pathogenic organisms that typically cause sickness or [antibiotic-resistant](http://time.com/4350585/superbug-cant-be-treated-with-antibiotics/?iid=sr-link3) genes. “I was surprised by the degree to which these environments really do look like people,” says senior author Curtis Huttenhower, associate professor of computational biology and bioinformatics. “But if you think about the relative size of a bacteria compared to how porous clothing is, it’s no surprise that we’re shedding all sorts of bugs.” In the future, this kind of technology might be helpful to monitor the microbes in different environments, like a subway, an airport or a kindergarten classroom. If the colonies started to shift from their normal state, that could signal the start of flu season or an early outbreak of norovirus, for example, and officials would get an early cue that it’s time to step up interventions like handwashing. So ditch the tissue when you hold the train pole. 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