As you take steps to avoid the germs and viruses that proliferate as winter progresses, you’ve no doubt received a good share of advice on how to avoid catching whatever’s going around.

ABCNews OnCall+ spoke with experts about some of the popular myths about germs that tend to spread as fast as the bacteria themselves this time of year.

Is a dog’s mouth cleaner than a person’s? How unsafe are public toilet seats? Some of these questions lack hard data, and the study findings sometimes conflict.

So before taking advice from your friends, you might want to check their wisdom about our microbe neighbors.

via Cleaning Up the Top 10 Myths About Germs.

Some good tips here:

Sponges typically DO NOT help keep your kitchen cleaner, they just spread germs around.

Plastic cutting boards ARE more sanitary than wooden ones.

Antibacterial soap DOES NOT keep your hands cleaner than regular soap.

And finally, they blowing air from a hand drier DO NOT spread germs.

There, you can finally sleep peacfully tonight.

There are more on that website, so check them out.