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This rubber footwear is so comfortable to go with especially during summer. Not only that. It is also considered as the cheapest footwear available and are quite popular for beach or outdoor wear. And as many celebrities use them, it has become a fashion statement.

Now for the bad news. What many of us don’t know is that this adorable footwear can be lethal. According to NYDailyNews.com, a lab test of two reporters’ flip-flops which they wore for four days revealed that a potentially deadly germ - Staphylococcus aureus - lurking on the rubber.

Staphylococcus aureus is a bacteria that is known as the most common cause of staph infections. If it penetrates into an open wound on your foot, which mostly happens during summer, the bacteria can seep into your bloodstream and if not taken care immediately, can cause death.

“It can make you pretty sick if it got into a wound and into your blood, where it could attack any of your internal organs,” says Dennis Kinney, Ph.D., the manager of the microbiology lab at EMSL Analytical. “If you didn’t treat it with antibiotics, you could die from it.”

The two pair of flip-flops went on in an expedition to the F, A, C, G, 2 and 3 trains in New York, walked through Prospect Park, out to bars in the West Village, to a Cyclones baseball game in Coney Island and rode the Cyclone. And when nature called, no choice but went to a public restroom at the Coney Island subway station.

And the lab result was shockingly nasty.

The flip-flops collected about 18,100 bacteria of the five most prevalent varieties found. 13,900 of these were collected in the trip to Coney Island and stopped off in the public restroom. To think, that was only just for four days… Imagine a little bit longer.

“If you wear shoes for three months, 93% have fecal bacteria and 20% have E. coli,” says Dr. Charles P. Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona.

Some of the bacteria that were found were common. But some that are called Aerococcus viridans and Rothia mucilaginous were also present and these can be found normally inside the mouth.

“It’s not a good sign,” says Kinney. “It means that people are spitting. If someone were sick and spitting on the ground, you could pick something up.”

The most dangerous of these? The Staph aureus. The worst thing that could happen is death if not treated early. Its slight contact can cause your skin to be irritated.

It seems that we don’t only get ankle sprains from wearing flip-flops but we can also get a hold of a lot of unseen entity.  We all walk on streets and go into public bathrooms. It’s inevitable. Whether we are wearing flip-flops, shoes, sandals or nothing at all. We just need to clean up at the end of the day to make sure we don’t get any deadly viruses or bacteria.