Seventeen-month-old Lexi Ann Furey of Riverview, Fla., squeals with delight as her mom, Vicky, squirts her with water from her toy fish and makes squeaking noises with her rubber ducky. It's bath time in the Furey house, a time that Lexi loves. Vicky knows, though, that while Lexi may be getting squeaky clean amidst the bubbles in the bathtub, her toys are actually getting dirty.

Doesn't seem possible, does it? After all, the toys are getting a bath along with Lexi, right? Wrong. Wet surfaces -- including wet toys -- create a perfect breeding ground for bacteria (some that are known to cause staph infections, respiratory and intestinal illnesses) as well as mold and mildew, which could all innocently end up in your toddler's mouth the next time she puts her cute rubber ducky or fish in her mouth.

Vicky says she is well aware of what lurks in her child's bath toys. She figured it out this summer when she let Lexi play with her bath toys in the swimming pool outside.

"We left the toys out in the pool and they got faded from the sun. When the color was gone, I could clearly see black 'stuff' inside of them, which I knew was mold and mildew. It was really gross," Vicky explains. Since then, Vicky says she avoids buying toys with holes in them; when she does have them in the house, she makes sure that she squeezes all the water out of the toys after Lexi's bath so they can dry. When the toys have been around for awhile, she throws them away and buys new ones. "Bath toys are cheap," she says.

Vicky's strategy is a good one, according to Dr. William Pomputius, an infectious disease specialist at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Fla. Although he says that parents should not worry about their kids getting sick from their bath toys (most kids don't), that it's best to avoid toys that are not completely sealed -- which includes rubber ducks that squeak.

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