Jennae Petersen of Athens, Ga., has had a "no shoes in the house" rule for years and says her family always thought she was a little crazy. When she first instituted the rule, the idea was just to save her carpet from wear, tear and dirt, but after reading a blog post about the types of bacteria that can be found on shoes, she's got even better reasons – namely, protecting her 2-year-old daughter.

"If I hadn't had this rule before, I would now," Petersen says. "Just the thought of E. coli being tracked into my daughter's bed at naptime would be enough to make me a convert."

The article Petersen read was based upon a study sponsored by the Rockport Company. The goal of the study was to verify bacteria levels on footwear and the effectiveness of machine washable shoes in reducing those levels. They also wanted to investigate the role of shoes in the movement of bacteria from contaminated floor spaces to other surfaces. To do so, 10 participants wore new shoes from the Rockport Machine Washable collection for two weeks. Then, the bottoms and insides of the shoes were sampled for total numbers of bacteria. What they found, says Dr. Chuck Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, was more than 400,000 units of bacteria inside and outside the shoes, including the nastiest of nasties – E. coli.

"If you think about the places you walk, this makes sense," Dr. Gerba says. "Public restrooms, for example, are a prime source for fecal matter. You also pick up viruses on your shoes, and so when you walk around you leave a trail of virus and bacteria. You're also probably picking up food as well, making your shoe a Happy Meal for germs."

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