Comparative Contamination Rate of Toys in Kindergartens and Households

Toys from both kindergartens and households harbour potential pathogenic bacteria, although hard toys were more prone to bacterial growth.

In kindergartens, the practice of bringing personal toys from home and back home on a routine basis should be discouraged. Twenty-seven (67.5%) toys were positive for at least 1 potential pathogenic bacteria, 7 (25.9%) were positive for coagulase negative staphylococci, 8 (29.6%) showed the presence of Bacillus species, and 15 (55.6%) were positive for coliforms. Furthermore, toys from kindergartens were contaminated at higher rate than toys from households (75% vs 60%) and hard toys were more contaminated than soft toys (66.7% vs 33.3%; P < .05).

The use of hard toys was significantly associated with bacterial contamination (P < .05). Coliforms were detected at higher percentage in soft toys from kindergartens than soft toys from households (83.3% vs 33.3%). It was also noted that the toys from both kindergartens and households were cleaned by dusting once a week and machine washed as often as possible. Moreover, 2 kindergartens allowed children to bring personal toys from home.