• Question: how many germs are in are body

    Asked by edward321 to Emma on 3 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      By germs do you mean harmful life forms? Because there are estimated to be 500-1000 different species of bacteria on or in our bodies.

      This works out as 1 000 000 000 000 000 bacterial cells!

      And there are other organisms too.

      Luckily almost all of these life forms live on us without causing us any harm and many of them actually help us in one way or another.

      Germs, or harmful organisms, tend not to live in us all of the time – we tend to pick them up from other places.

      The exception to this rule is that some bacteria live quite happily in/on one place of our body but if they were transferred elsewhere they would start to cause problems.

      Does this answer your question?

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