Computers Breeding Harmful Fungus

Soft writes: "The BBC has a story on several kinds of fungus proliferating among the dust inside computers. Not quite Dust Puppies, but hospitals are worried about the computers they use, especially in intensive care units." So besides monitor burn, eyestrain, electrical shock, carpal tunnel syndrome, short attention span and lifting-related injuries, now you can worry about Aspergillus fumigatus, too. (Or occasionally disinfect.)

Comments

breeding Bolshevism

[Jonathunder]

For those wondering what in the Heck the "the as-washrooms-are-to-bolsheviks dept." reference is about, it was a 1920's advertisement by the Scott Paper Company, warning if your company restrooms didn't have the right paper towels, you may be fostering Communism among your employees. Really.

Not surprising.

[Chas]

Something a lot of people outside the health institutions don't hear much about.

Nosocomial Infections

Basic Translation: Hospital-Acquired Infections (you get sick from stuff you didn't have before you came into the hospital).

It's really not surprising that relatively warm, dark environments like computer cases are breeding grounds for this sort of thing. Heck, you have people going into and out of infected rooms, picking stuff up, mixing it about on keyboards, touch-screens, etc. Computers are already an avenue of infection simply due to their high traffic usage.

I work on an orthopaedic/trauma/general surgery unit at my institution. You name it, we've seen it. There's so much stuff (disease-causing organisms) coming in, that most people barely notice if they pick up "a little something else".

Consequently, we spend a LOT of time making sure rooms are clean and surgical patients are kept as far as feasibly possible from infected patients.


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:Not surprising.

[Technician]

I wonder if one of the custom case jobs could be modified just for this. Instead of fancy Neon in the case, put in a germicidal short wave UV lamp. Don't forget to add the charcoal filter over the power supply fan for the ozone.

Just a cotton-pickin' minute.

[Alik]

Aspergillus is a favorite fungus for my profs to test, because the second your immune system goes away, it just waltzes in and starts invading everything it can find. However, one of the things I recall being taught is that part of the reason we have troubles with it is that it's literally *everywhere*. I'd be willing to bet money that it was in the ICU dust beforehand, just due to all the incredibly sick patients (some of whom had invasive aspergillosis) that had come through. It's the same reason the antibiotic-resistant bugs live in hospitals --- we can't get rid of them.

Oh, and for everyone else worried about Aspergillus from their computers: quit it. Unless you've lost a seriously large chunk of your immune system to chemotherapy, AIDS, leukemia, or something similar, the worst Aspergillus can do to you is trigger your mold allergies. When something is everywhere, the body learns to deal with it.

Re:Just a cotton-pickin' minute.

[IronicCheese]

When something is everywhere, the body learns to deal with it.

Are you sure about that? I mean, MSFT is everywhere and...oh, nevermind.

Keyboard Grossness

[xx01dk]

Just reminded me of the time I was tasked with finding out why my boss's keyboard didn't work any more.

There was literally a hardened crust of fried chicken skin, hair, grease, coffee grinds (and probably coffee), cola, nail clippings, and various other unidentified biological stuff. Sounds like the perfect breeding ground for anything that likes to grow in warm, dark, sticky places.

Of course, this was the guy everyone feared because of his projectile spittle, so it was probably not unreasonable to be able to find remnants of his meals inside everything at his desk, including his computer. Glad I don't work there anymore.

Just clean house once in a while!

[wowbagger]

This is why you should clean you machines once in a while: shut them down (quitcherbitchn about your uptime - it's not a contest!), open the case, and either vacuum (with non-static generating vacuum) or blow (again, with a non-static generating air source) the dust out. Clean the power supply (the 300VDC on the main caps will tend to attract dust) very carefully. Ditto for the monitor: the 27KV anode will pull dust out of the air like a magnet pulls iron filings. (You should see some of the machines I've seen in machine shops/auto garages/printing shops.... Gak!)

Not only will you prevent allergies, you'll keep your system running cooler, help prevent you power supply from sparking out, and have a good chance to check all your fans to see if any are about to fail.

If you are really hard-core, you'll put filters on all intake fans, run positive pressure (i.e. fans blowing in, and air exiting via slots/holes etc.) and clean the filters once a month.

And DON'T SMOKE NEAR YOUR MACHINE! You've no real association for the word "disgusting" until you've worked on a monitor that was used by a smoker. I've seen some monitors that I 'm surprised didn't die of cancer of the CRT, they had so much tar and nicotine on the bottle. You can go through an entire bottle of 99% isopropyl alchohol (DON'T use regular rubbing alcohol, it is 30% water!) and still not get all the gook off.

A clean machine is a happy machine.

Re:Just clean house once in a while!

[Waffle Iron]

And DON'T SMOKE NEAR YOUR MACHINE! You've no real association for the word "disgusting" until you've worked on a monitor that was used by a smoker. I've seen some monitors that I 'm surprised didn't die of cancer of the CRT, they had so much tar and nicotine on the bottle. You can go through an entire bottle of 99% isopropyl alchohol (DON'T use regular rubbing alcohol, it is 30% water!) and still not get all the gook off.

Here's some more important advice: DON'T SMOKE NEAR YOUR LUNGS! You can't swab them out with alchohol. Same goes for your coworkers' lungs.

Re:Just clean house once in a while!

[wowbagger]

The simplest way it to take the power supply outside, and using a source of compressed air blow the dust out.

However, use a source of clean, dry air: don't just go down to your local gas station and use the air for airing up your tires - it frequently has lots of water in it. (when filling your tires, it's a good idea to bleed some air from the air line, and if you see mist, go elsewhere.)

Opening a power supply is really no big deal. The capacitors in the power supply will have bleeder resistors that will pull the charge off them when the power supply is turned off. Just undo the case of the power supply and air it out.

As for a monitor: again, not a big deal. You're not going to be reaching around inside the thing, just hosing it out with compressed air. Don't worry about the charge on the bottle: again, modern monitors have a bleeder resistor that drains the charge off in a few minuts.

Also, the warm up time of an old monitor had nothing to do with "amplifying the power in the coil" - the delay was in heating up the filaments in the tubes used to power the monitor. Until they were hot enough to emit electrons the tubes didn't work. Modern monitors don't use tubes, save for the bottle, and the time for the CRT's filament to heat up is only a few seconds.

However, if you don't feel comfortable opening up your monitor or power supply, then don't. You are the best judge of what you can or cannot do. However, I wouldn't (and don't) worry about it. Just make sure to unplug things when you are working on them.

How about something to kill the fungus?

[President of The US]

Fungi like dark, warm, environments, no? What if a small fluorescent light were installed in the cases? Perhaps that would help keep the growth down. Or maybe an ultraviolet light? UV is sometimes used to sterilize drinking water and is known to alter the DNA of fungi, bacteria, viruses to keep them from reproducing. There's a chart of how much UV is required to kill certain organisms at http://users.erols.com/markricci/newpage1.htm.

Most computer manufacturers who sell large quantities to hospitals and other health-care facilities would probably be willing to install these.
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