Toys and toilets: cross‐sectional study using children's toys to evaluate environmental faecal contamination in rural Bangladeshi households with different sanitation facilities and practices

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate household faecal contamination using children's toys among 100 rural Bangladeshi households categorised as 'cleaner' (toilet that reliably separates faeces from the environment and no human faeces in/around living space) or 'less clean' (no toilet or toilet that does not reliably separate faeces from the environment and human faeces in/around living space). METHODS: We distributed toy balls to each household and rinsed each study toy and a toy already owned by the household in 200 ml of Ringer's solution. We enumerated faecal coliforms and faecal streptococci from each rinse using membrane filtration methods. RESULTS: Study toys from 39 cleaner households had lower mean faecal coliform contamination than toys from 61 less clean households (2.4 log10 colony-forming units (CFU)/200…