Slashdot Mirror
Workstations 'Dirtier Than Toilets'
hettb writes "How often do you clean your keyboard and surrounding work area? A recent study (also discussed here) found that computer workstations harbour 400 times more health threatening bacteria than the average toilet seat. If you're anything like me, spending most of both professional and personal time in front of your computer, this is sobering news. "
Deal? ;)
Every 6 months I disassemble my machine. Everything that can be washed on the kitchen sink is washed there; everything else is dusted and/or cleaned with q-tips and alcohol. A bit overkill but the keyboard keys never get stuck.
A new anti-porn bill is working its way through congress...
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
Man, if workstations are that dirty, imagine how dirty PCs must be.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
That's the best offer I've had all day.
This is why I don't lick my keyboard. ;)
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I think this all depends on who you let use your computer and what kind of web sites they visit. :)
I believe in constant exposure to bacteria
viruses and the like. Keeps your body tough
and your immune system strong...
all that antibacterial soap shit gonna
kill you one day...
not really kidding in case you are wondering
If you're anything like me, spending most of both professional and personal time in front of your computer
Just what sort of personal time are people spending at their computer that it's dirtier than the toilet? Are you surfing one handed again or what?
"The premise of the study was to find the germiest place in the workplace," said Chuck Gerba, who headed the study. And you thought that you had a bad job.
my computer just gave me the clap!
If I masturbate to porn daily on my PC, is anyone surprised?
that most of use geeks nervously bite nails and other sloppy habits, this bit of news probably explains why our life expectancy is 26 years.
Exposure to bacteria is normal. We did not evolve with bleach and lavatories. Our bodies expect to encounter bacteria and to some expect we have to to keep out immune systems primed.
Why get paranoid about bacteria that naturally crawls over pretty much everything in our environment. Have you got ill off your keyboard? No, I didn't think so.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
People ask me if my keyboard is a sneeze guard for my desk.
For some reason I have that scene from gattaca in front of my eyes. Where the main character is vacuum cleaning his keyboard at the end of the training day. The interesting bit is that noone is really bothered or amused by this... It seems a bit overboard, but still within reasonable limits...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Is it just me or is all of this really quite moot. Between what we are exposed to outside naturally or what we subject ourselves to daily what is on our workstation is hardly going to really make a difference one way or another.
.. ...
Lets see some things that are probalw worse.
1) Any food/drink ordered from think geek
2) Coke
3) Paint fumes/dust and metal dust from people Modding their case.
4) Sitting in from of this damm irradating device for 12hrs/day
5)
6)
203331) some extra bactera on your desk
Filter the web connection...Stop dirty material before you are ,er, exposed.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
They haven't seen my toilet!
Just kidding folks!
However, how the heck are we supposed to clean keyboards easily? Maybe they can come up with optical keyboards? In regards to the mouse, no excuse! I guess I used to just wipe my butt, now I have to wipe my mouse and keyboard!
. . . and the lesson for the day is: Don't put your hands in your mouth and vice-versa!
"Entertain the Brutes"
Do us all a favor and piss into the monitor... while it is powered on.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Think of it - cleaner environment - no more wasted trips, the possibilities...
I doubt many people catch that many diseases from toilets. I know it's common for people to become paranoid about using a public toilet for health reasons, but it's absurd. Just don't sit in anything wet or lick your hands afterwards and you'll be fine. That goes for using both a computer and a toilet.
I am a sys admin for a large company. I see people in the restroom all the time that don't wash their hands... Normally this wouldn't bother me, but then I think of how I'll be at that same users pc in 20 minutes. It makes me want to wear latex gloves like the doctor's office uses.
post PICS dammit!
My workstation IS my toilet...
High crap concentrations have been found on the internet, lending to the health risk associated with computers.
"There is so much bull here!" said Melvin Dixon, referring to the Republican website from his workstation, located in Manhattan. "At least with my toilet its human, and you can use Mr. Clean to help the situation!"
Mr. Clean was unavailable for comment.
The study, funded by The Clorox Co.
Hmmm. Imagine that. A company that makes cleaning/germicidal products finds that a common workplace/home device is direly in need of disinfecting. I wonder if we'll be seeing Clorox Key-Wipes any time in the very very very near future?
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
This might help. Indeed, the strong acid in the urine will kill off most of the dangerous keyboard-dwelling bacteria. And the poop stains will prompt even the most lazy cleaning lady to do something about the issue. There's a reason toilets are cleaner than workstations, you know...
At school I remember some old ADM keyboards that had slippery keys, with much blackness just aside from the contact points. Shudder!
Those were public terminals, though.
I've noticed that keyboard cleanliness really depends on the person. Not whether they dump coffee and cheetos on them, but whether their hands are particularly heavy sources of oil.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I just turned my keyboard upside down and shook it. Now I need to go get the vacuum and a hazmat team *Passes out*
Can all fish swim?
"The study, funded by The Clorox Co., analyzed more than 7,000 samples from personal work spaces and common areas in offices in Tucson, New York, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla."
Hmm. What is the ratio of workspace surface area to toilet seat area? What is the ratio of Clorox money spent phrasing the results of the "scientific study" in such a way that it would cause readers to think about buying Clorox products to the amount spent on calculating this outrageous result? Is the inside of our mouths or stomachs dirtier than a toilet seat ("more bacteria")?
I was browsing Slashdot, fighting the urge to lick my desk, when I saw this article. Good thing too....
So there are more germs on my keyboard and mouse than on the toliet seat -- is that a problem? I'm the only one typically using my computer, so the germs are probably mine. I'm not likely to get sick from them since I put them there in the first place.
Life is short: void the warranty.
I just realized that I didnt need to get glasses. Just cleaning my monitor works!! 8)
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
I am so happy to know that. I can't believe that for years I've been touching a dirty computer and then touching my clean penis. I could be transferring germs from my computer to my penis without even knowing it.
I always thought I was just doing it because I needed to goof off that last half hour of the week but I guess I wasn't goofing off after all!
The absolute worst offender has to be phones though. If your phone gets used by anyone but you, you're well advised to disinfect the mouthpiece, especially during the cold/flu season.
"Dirtier Than Toilets"
Ya wanna bet?
Finally an excuse to put in for hazard pay.
Who could have guessed what the conclusions would have been?
Let's see- after using our new "Desk Wipes" product for just two days you too can rid your desk of 99.9% of those nasty microbes.
Hmmm.....
I know my kbd is cleaner than my toilet, cause I clean it more often!
Sure there are more germs, but they're my germs. That's like smelling your own fart -- no harm no foul
Synergy is your friend
A toilet seat is clean compared to some stuff some of us have to go through every day of their lives..
Un-Hygienic Data on the London Underground
During Autumn of 2000, a team of scientists at the Department of Forensics at University College London removed a row of passenger seats from a Central Line tube carriage for analysis into cleanliness. Despite London Underground's claim that the interior of their trains are cleaned on a regular basis, the scientists made some alarming discoveries:
This is what was found on the surface of the seats:
* 4 types of hair sample (human, mouse, rat, dog)
* 7 types of insect (mostly fleas, mostly alive)
* vomit originating from at least 9 separate people
* human urine originating from at least 4 separate people
* human excrement
* rodent excrement
* human semen
When the seats were taken apart, they found:
* the remains of 6 mice
* the remains of 2 large rats
* 1 previously unheard of fungus
It is estimated that by holding one of the armrests, you are transferring to your body the natural oils and sweat from as many as 400 different people. It is estimated that it is generally healthier to smoke five cigarettes a day than to travel for one hour a day on the London Underground. It is far more hygienic to wipe your hand on the inside of a recently flushed toilet bowl before eating, than to wipe your hand on a London Underground seat before eating. It is estimated that within London, more work sick-days are taken because of bugs picked up whilst traveling on the London Underground than for any other reason (including alcohol).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I completely believe this. I have a coworker that has a 3 year-old cup of coffee that he keeps on his desk. It's mighty furry. He jokes that it will cure cancer one day. :)
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Forget keboards and bacteria - the real fun is in dust mites and carpet.
I've used some campus computing sites where there is a brown slimy coating on everything. Probably a result of human oils produced during the many all-nighters around exam time.
Amazing magic tricks
the poop stains will prompt even the most lazy cleaning lady to do something
Yeah, like quit her job!
of having my workstation on the toliet.
How much time do you spend on or at the toilet on any given day? 5-10 minutes tops? Some people take a really long time in the rest room, but it still does not even begin to stack up against the amount of time we spend at our computers.
:)
Human beings are inherently dirty creatures. We can go through the whole day, doing almost no physical activity, and all the while, we're pumping out grease and perspiration. Meanwhile, we're going around touching door handles, money, and all sorts of other unsanitary surfaces. We then proceed to touch our keyboards and mice with these filthy hands. On top of that, many of us eat at our workstations, providing an ongoing food supply to whatever may be living on our input devices.
Now, think about the toilet. We spend very little time there. We never touch the seat. When we urinate, we're dispending a liquid that contains amonia and is actually steril. When we deficate, we're not very likely to get the contents on any surface except inside the bowl, where it is promply removed by about 5 liters per second of water.
Again, it comes as no surprise that computers are just outright dirty.
Why bother.
Ah, so they envolve into health threatening bacteria.
I've always wondered what happens to everything that falls into my keyboard! =)
But I still cant figure out how "THAT" got in "THERE"
Rapid Nirvana
Just throw away all of the empty beer bottles and put the empty plates in the sink.
Considering all the really really "dirty" stuff some of us keep on our hard drives.
The same guy has been used as a source by Cecil, for whatever its worth. His conclusions in the article above are pretty simillar to what he has said before, namely that toilet seats are pretty clean and everything else not so much.
Straight Dope article
Looking into the ol' Happy Hacking Lite, I see a couple years' worth of dust kitties and random pieces of lint. Even if it were on top of the keys were I might actually touch it, and not well-hidden beneath the keys themselves, this would not disgust me.
On the other hand, no matter how yummy the burrito was, I'll be damned if I'd leave a single drop of its corpse sitting on the seat of my toilet. I mean, really, how often do you leave *ahem* "dirt particles" where they land? Roughly never, particularly if 1) you ever have or intend to have a female over to visit or 2) ever expect to use that particular toilet again.
So, tell me again why I should be surpised?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
People who live in sterile environments develop more alergies and have weaker immune systems than people who's immune systems are kept active. It's been proven that people now have much worse alergies than they did 200 years ago, because people overuse medication and their immune systems never get the chance to build up immunities.
I found a place that sells them at:
natural solutions
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
One of the things that everyone seems to miss when people make this kind of comparison is that toilet seats are actually remarkably clean. They're engineered to be a very bad place for bacteria to grow, and people routinely clean them with strong antiseptic solutions. In fact, a typical toilet seat has fewer bacteria than a typical kitchen counter. Your toilet seat may very well be the cleanest place in your house.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
What about sitting on the toilet, using my PDA? Would that be worse than just sitting on the toilet? Better than using my workstation?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
from now on, onsite pc support should put on disposable latex gloves before typing or touching the mouse. For a real gas, put on surgical garb and scrub up before opening the case.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well . I suppose that really depends on EXACTLY how much of it you eat.
..
I don't know about you . but 'watermelon blast' anti-bacterial hand satatizer(tm) smells good enough to eat
you just have to have a BIG glass of water handy.
[nothing like cleaning the pipes]
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
It is way way nastier than my keyboard which is washed in pepsi or mountain dew at least once per week.
Hey, at least I know where the germs came from!
Maybe there will be a strain of flesh-eating bacteria that flourishes in keyboards (ok, so that is far from likely) and then the media can go have a field day of panic.
How about a plastic-eating bacteria? Then we could see them try and explain it not as a computer "bug" or a "virus."
eh. I have too much free time.
certron
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
That was easily the most disgusting PC I've ever seen (including one that was cockroach infested). Being a retail PC tech may be low paying and sometimes boring, but you get to see things you'll never find in a corporate environment.
Freemasons run the country!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
I clean my "workstation" (I usually call it a "computer" but whatever) when either 1) keys don't come up again when pressed or 2) the trackball no longer rotates.
Other than that, I let the ol' immune system take care of it.
Just now I looked at my keyboard, and found a small hair between the Z and X keys.
I plucked it out, and thought it was pretty weird. I have shoulder length hair, and here i find a short and curley, rough textured looking hair about 1 or 2 inches long.
I need to get out more.
As more people become semi-educated in science in our society, people are shifting their traditional taboos to equally superstitious, but scientifically inspired ones. Dirt and bacteria is a prime example of this. Previous generations believed that certain types of animals, places, and people were inherently dirty. Usually these were things that did not fit into the culture's prevailing worldview. Dirt was "things out of place." Now, people are starting to get away from that sort of thinking, but instead are latching onto bits of misunderstood science. Bacteria is a good example. People sit in their high school biology classes and learn all about little "germs" that live all over everything, just waiting to make you sick. This is reinforced by television commercials for anti-bacterial dish soap and aerosol disinfectants. In fact, such ambient bacteria are really only dangerous to those with severely weakened immune systems. For healthy people, this bacteria is harmless and potentially helpful since the immune system is strengthened by regularly fighting off this kind of bacteria. Still, culture is a powerful thing. Think about how you would feel eating a french fry you had dropped on the edge of a toilet seat. According to this study, it's cleaner than your desk, but most people still wouldn't eat it.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
The Slashdot version notwithstanding, I saw nothing in either article indicating that the study identified health-threatening bacteria. Just plain bacteria. The study is funded by Clorox. Think there's an agenda?
How is this offtopic? Online porn has a direct correlation to dirty/sticky keyboards.
I might have to get a cleaner power source
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~brejc8/rat.html
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Gotta love the media's constant portrayal of "bacteria" as something to be feared and destroyed at all costs. Bacteria are the basis from which all life (based on the cell theory definition) on Earth evolved. Not only that, but without them, we could not exist. Bacteria fix nitrogen to the roots of the plants we eat (or the plants which our cattle and pigs and chicken eat); bacteria (specifically, cyanobacteria, not "algae" and not "plants") created the oxygen-rich atmosphere billions of years ago and continue to contribute to it. Bacteria line our intestines and create vitamin K, which the body is unable to produce. Bacteria teem over every square inch of our bodies and can thrive in the most extreme of conditions. Any efforts to senselessly control or kill them will always be met with stronger resistance. Bacteria have been effectively "communicating" by swapping DNA plasmids for billions of years; collectively they form what could be seen as a neural network with far more evolutionary power than the entire human race. Making them out to be the enemy only creates a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Yes, there are quite a few nasty bacteria out there, but the world is for the most part an equilibrium where these few strains are kept in check by the sheer volume of other harmless or beneficial bacteria.
I say, the more, the merrier! Did you know that salmonella used to die at freezing temperatures, until scientists attempts to create a concoction of various strains of bacteria with which to innoculate chickens? The salmonella evolved and resisted so well that it thrives better than ever before. Let that be a lesson to the fools out there who want to kill every "bacteria" in their presence.
Actually, assuming an average toilet seat is in your average home, it's probably one of the cleanest places in the house. I believe kitchen counters and cutting boards take the cake here (no pun intended).
I clean my keyboard with Post-It notes.. I haven't gotten around to putting my keyboards into the dishwasher yet.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
They haven't seen my toilet.
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
I figure my cigarette ashes kill all the germs when they accidently fall in my keyboard
Someone should hurry to create and patent paper keyboard covers. They would fit right next to the paper toilet seat covers in air planes. I bet they would be a big hit in libraries and other places with public computers. They could even make them in different colors and with different keyboard layouts, that should solve the problems in a multi linqual environments. If this isn't enough then they could add aroma or flavour to it. Who wouldn't like a chocolade flavoured keyboard cover? No? What about a cover smelling like roses?
But this doesnt stop with keyboards, when was the last time you cleaned your remote control huh? Or your stereo, or the interior of your car? Or your light switches? Or your phone? Yes, i see it now, this is all we need to get the world economy back on track.
You can submerse one of these completely, should make it very easy to disinfect. I have one just because it folds nicely into a very small space, great for travel. Key response is only ok, but the size is much better than many laptop keyboards.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Damn... too bad we shipped off all the keyboard sanitizers on the B-Ark.
I take drugs seriously.
If you spend most of your personal time on the computer you are probably in serious need of a priority evaluation. I don't know about you guys but after a long day at work, the last god damn thing I want to do it go home to sit in front of a computer!
Here's a link:
A recent study concluded the London Underground was unspeakably unsanitary
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Man, and I thought that white powdery substance in my keyboard was sugar!
Any of you noticed (on yourself or other information workers) a kind of scaley infection on the elbows. I've noticed on quite a few IT people and myself. It's this weird calous type thingie but ends up cracking and hurting after a while. I suspect it's either a type of fungus (like athlete's foot) or a bacteria that roughs up the skin (mild flesh eater maybe?). No idea, but I'm convinced it's related to body oils and human contamination.
Anyway, I've been cleaning regularly with bleach and have found that the problem goes away.
FYI
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Another commonly hanled object also carries around a lot of bacteria.
Cold Hard Cash! Yup, it's a fact. That's why many places require food service staff to wear platic gloves if they also handle cash.
It's a lost cause to try to avoid bacteria completely and, as the other posts here point out, you don't really need nor should you want to.
P.S. - I know guy who are plumbers who will stick their bare hands into stuff you don't even want to know about. After a good gon of hand cleaner they'll go and grab a sandwich. A few of them are almost as old as dirt too.
...The headline talks about toilets and workstations as if they were two different things...
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
needless to say, it's in their best interest to jack up bacteria paranoia levels whenever possible.
nowhere does it say that the bacteria levels on the desktop are unhealthy, just higher.
I'd never really seen anybody with warts until my first job. A company of under 30 people had at least 5 people with several warts on their hands. I had 12 warts on both hands with 2-3 years of starting at that place. I've always blamed the keyboards and mice for spreading the virus.
My PC was declared a superfund site by the EPA. Too bad Bush's republician killed the appropriation in the budget to get it cleaned up. I guess I'll just have to throw it all in the waste basket and let the cleaning people take it out. I wonder if I'll go to jail for doing that?
How the heck do you clean your average keyboard?
Take all the keycaps off and put them in soapy water?
If so, it's no wonder nobody does it.
is piss acidic? it is mostly ammonia due to the nitrates in the urea... if only my brain worked enough to recall if that was basic or not...
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
no more licking my mouse when i spill soup on it. what a waste of soup.
go get it
I don't even want to talk about where I thought you were talking about putting that stylus, except to wonder whether it would then interfere with the wipe.
Virg
right now I'm leaning towards basic - as is my piss
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I read an article (I wish I had a link to it) where they studied the cleanliness of many things in the house, and it turns out that the toilet seat is one of the cleanest things in the house. It's so smooth that it's hard for anything to stick to it. The Average cutting board has orders of magnitude more bacteria than a toilet seat...
that and the fact that the average Slashdot reader is a dirty lunix hippy gross me out.
Most of the bacteria in the oil and sweat on your fingertips are perfectly benign; other people are covered in bacteria, but they are not septic. You can touch them. Even if they are all sweaty....
The bacteria in someone's other excretions - especially saliva, feces and the delightful sexual juices - are potentially infectious. Blood is more likely to contain viruses (since blood borne bacteria generally kill you stone dead). Unless the other person has a staph infection on their fingertips, the bacteria on their keyboard are not. Even the infectious stuff in snot, which often ends up on people's fingertips, is also (usually) viral and, in any case, generally killed by being dried out.
The fact is - most of the organisms that remain infectious after being dried out live in your scat.
Whatever the bacteria count on a desk, I'd recommend eating off of one over eating off a toilet, which is likely to harbor some small number of bacteria (or other parasites) that favor the human digestive tract.
This is not to say that staph infections are not a real problem; especially in hospitals, which (generally) do use disinfectant soap. I am saying that alarm over the bacteria on your desk is premature.
Researchers also separated office workers into two groups: one group used disinfectant wipes to clean their desks, phones and computers; the other group did not.
Reee-lly! What an interesting project. I wonder who funded it? I have some other observations about people who clean their desks with sanitizing wipes, but I'll leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals.
Dr. Gerba has also done work on how anti-bacterial kitchen supplies reduce of risk for disease (html courtesy of google.) Search the document for "Gerba".
Hell, take a look at his press coverage overall.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Plus shouldn't that electromagnetic radiation from the CRT monitors the Swedes are always warning us about be killing these buggers?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Guess i should stop cutting raw chicken on my desk then?
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
announces the launch of their new anti-virus program. You must return to Symantec once a month to get new alcohol which will kill new virii that may be on your keyboard.
If you think about it there are some pretty bad hygiene practaces in the world. At McDonalds staff handle food and cash, and so do the customers who then go on to eat with their hands. in webcafes the keyboards must be complete health & safety failures. Even just holding the safety rails on trains and buses is a bactera-sharing moment. who needs the postal service when a suicide-terrorist could just put anthrax on their hands and go around the city using these services.
We might as well make use of it, what about developing bacteria sized memory modules, then you could download your mp3s on a batch and create the ultimate p2p filesharing network
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
And you thought you had a dirty job .....
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Yes, my keyboard is full of nasty infectious microbes. Funny thing is that their older brothers and sisters were already killed when they went through my body. Why would I be worried about germs I put on my keyboard that I already killed?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I'm willing to wager we have some rather large, rather greasy, rather nasty slashdot readers on here that emit a level 4 biotoxin out of every pore on their body.
Hell, I bet one thing that would be really nasty is your pillow. The majority of us drewl, if just a little. I touch hundreds of things during the day, and no one is bitching about those. Just another stop on the bacteria in my hands daily trip.
But you know what's really bad to touch? Henry Winkler. He got the clap. Twice.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Here come the advertisements for typing/mouse gloves. Not only do they protect you from all these germs, but they also improve your typing speed!
/. first :P
You'll see them on
It was from that pile of dung called Thomas Friedman
Heh, reminds me of the SNL skit where Tim Meadows goes around with the Fecalvision glasses, and the place lights up like a Christmas tree.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
I've heard kitchen worktops (or "counters", for USAians) are considerably less clean than the average toilet, although I'm not sure whose definition of "clean" that is. Number of bacteria, IIRC.
:-)
It makes sense actually; is your kitchen worktop as smooth/difficult for stuff to get caught in as flat porcelain, does it have anywhere near as much water going past it as a toilet, and when did you last put bleach on it?
does this mean i should stop eating my taco bell as i type this message?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
scientists yet again find proof that eggs are bad for you.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
I've been using those flushable toilet seat covers on my workstation for years.
Well, my computer usage has reached the state where I have to use latex even for writing documents.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
The same could be said about most system admins too.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I usually take some windex or fantastic and spray and clean everything every few weeks. With the keyboard I take the same cleaner and spray it in between the keys and shake it upside down. Most keyboards survive, but it did destroy a Microsoft natural a few weeks ago. I guess Redmond HW is that tough. My mother once dripped Honey all over the keyboard of her HP Vectra. I figure it was toast, I literally put the thing in the sink and ran hot water and soap over it until it was clean. Dried it by shaking, and it still works 2 years later.
Don't ask me for help with body fluids though.
Probably an entire freaking herd of yak in there.
I agree.
My newly-wed wife is constantly telling me how I need to clean everything soooooooo thoroughly, and how bad bacteria is.
I keep telling her that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, and keep having to point out that I have not been ill since I was 11yrs old, while she is constantly sick.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Sure the bacteria isn't all coming from that big smelly hairy guy in the next cube who has the Princess Amidala screensaver?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Yeah, see, here's the thing. If my keyboard is coated in scum, bacteria and filth, it's still *my* scum, bacteria, and filth. I can't give myself something I don't already have.
Whereas that public toilet... Herpes can be transmitted that way. ('course, I still use public toilets, because I don't fear the invisible killer and wash my hands nine times after they touch the atmosphere...)
StoneCypher is Full of BS
on my toilet seat made of my workmates' keyboards.
Unless you do support at coworkers' desks, that is. If the only one using your computer is yourself, the only bacteria on your computer are your own (either before or after you get them).
I use the dvorak keyboard layout, so I have a bunch of those IBM clicky button PS/2 keyboards because I can remove the keycaps and arrange them in the dvorak layout.
Another benefit of these keyboards is that you can pop off the keycaps, put them in a nylon stocking and place them in the dishwasher to clean them.
You can also remove the case and pull out the electronics and place the outer case in the dishwasher as well and it is very easy to do.
I wish IBM made them like they used to.
Really gives new meaning to the term 'Sticky Keys'
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
You should see the comps in my school.. I've been asking staff for years to at least get the keyboards and mice cleaned occasionally, seeing as most of them have now had at least four years of grubby little fingers (side note: before now I've found up to a centimetre of fluff on the mouse rollers). You think an office is bad, think of the little year sevens who pick their noses :)
:)
Still, I haven't noticed getting any more diseases from them so I've never really seen it as a problem; and seeing as their definition of an upgrade is "throw absolutely everything out and spend £10,000 on completely new equipment, and then wonder why the budget is empty" it's never too unsanitary. Maybe I should make a point of getting out a baby wipe and cleaning them off every so often
I like a clean toilet because I don't want to get some other persons waste products on me. It's not out of desire to stay away from poisonous microbes it's because that stuff is icky and smells bad and makes your clothes all nasty.
I wonder if this study came from the same group of people who tell us all the useful bit of information that dog's mouths have less bacteria than our own. Yeah, that's great. I still aint gonna kiss a dog on the lips.
Being clean and being free of bacteria have nothing to do with each other. Clean has everything to do with visual and tactile sensation. If I look at a counter top and it's got gravy and greese all over it, that's not a dirty counter. However, if I wipe off that stuff with a sponge, it's clean.
Eat it Proctor and Gamble.
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
'nuff said
I have to agree with most other posts here -- I don't think we should be too particularly worried, seeing as there is not an epidemic of "computer disease" going around....
However, one of the things that mosts disgusts me is telephones. Picture this -- I do telecommunications (end-user) support for a living. Often when people leave, I'm in charge of picking up their phone, cleaning, and readying it for re-deploy.
Some of the older phones (they're all Rolm) have buttons that are prone to getting downright cruddy. I physically have to scrape the number pad off with a screwdriver to get all the dirt off, and then I use the specified cleaner for the phone.
And don't get me started about the women (men too?) that wear a lot of makeup, and then it seamlessly transfers itself to the handset and microphone portion... ewwwww.
Some of the stuff is downright nasty, and I can assure you, might possibly cause disease. If you licked it.
Karnal
Thankfully, i think the majority of us can say that we don't spend most of both our professional and personal time in front of our toilets.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Isn't that why we have an immune system? Bacteria have been around a lot longer than we have and yet we managed to evolve. It's only marketing that has made bacteria out to be an evil threat.
Get two slices of enriched white bread, wipe each along the insides of a urinal, join together and enjoy.
My dad said one of his friends did this as a drunken dare in college.
dang... gravy and "grease" and it is a dirty counter. Cod sarnit, sassa-frassin'...
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
How do I use the health hazards of workstations
to successfully file, argue, and win a lawsuit
against my employer?
Looking for early retirement,
Woot.
This is why I use a Keyboard Condom.
While many readers poo-poo the study because it was funded by Clorox, I wonder who else they expect to conduct such studies? Clorox makes cleaning products... it makes sense for them to find out what things need cleaning, no?
I wouldn't expect the average person to go around collecting samples from all of the surfaces in their house to grow in dishes and find problematic places.
The results don't surprise me at all. Anyone who's taken a high-school level biology course has probably done exactly that in class and found that commonly handled items have lots of bacteria. I believe door knobs and phones were the worst surfaces tested by my class. (which reminds me of a particular chapter of the hitchhikers guide...)
That's sick. You need a good Rye bread for
something like that. White bread is really
bad for you!
Not to sound like a conspiracy nut... but I would bet that somewhere behond these studies are Proctor and Gamble as well as other companies who's stable of brands include some form of soap.
This kind of alarmist garbage sells anti-bacterial soap and in the end makes thing worse. We're creating super bacteria with our obsession with cleanliness. We need to be exposed to bactieria so that our immune system can learn to fight it off. If we keep in a sterile environment too much our immumne systems get weak and lazy. Ask anyone who puts in many hours in a clean room. They tend to get sick much more often.
Good hygeine doesn't come cheap. :-)
Keyboards (and mice) are a lot harder to clean than phone receivers. There's money to be made here.
-aa6e
Fiat Lux.
The above may have been an urban legend, however I do remember a legit Science News article about toilets and pathogenic materials, so I looked it up (link provided below). Bottom line: toilets may be disgusting, but they don't harbor pathogens. The dishrags and sponges you have in your kitchen are probably worse.
t m.
See http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/9_14_96/bob2.h
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No comment.
Thats why I wear an Army NBC suit before I work on a user's desktop.
It only adds an extra 30 minutes to each ticket, and its quite stylish to boot.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
The keyboard on my home machine regularly has enough alcohol spilled on it to kill off anything living inside. Sure, it looks nasty, but it's safe.
Sheesh, it seems like everything is dirtier than toilets nowadays...
Your kitchen cutting board has 200 times more fecal matter than the average toilet seat. Thats why I've started preparing all my meals in the bathroom, using the toilet seat for a cutting board instead (hey, its 200 times cleaner, right?)
Well, this article has convinced me. I'm going to dip my telephone in the toilet once a week for a good cleaning. No more germs for me.
I Heart Sorting Networks
And they found germs? Oh, what a surprise. And I'll bet that if a computer industry association funded a study, they'd find that keyboards are perfectly healthy.
Unlike the Slashdot lead in, they did NOT say the bacteria were "health threatening." They did not say the "germs" were dangerous. They didn't say they had shown that they caused disease. They did not say they POTENTIALLY could cause disease. They did not say that the people using the antimicrobial wipes obtained any health benefits (fewer sicks days, etc).
All they said was, there were bacteria on your keyboard. Big deal. There are bacteria in cheese, in yogurt, in sauerkraut, in your own mouth right now, in your own gut right now, etc. There are not just bacteria but MITES in your eyelids.
Yes, it's true that colds in particular are spread more by hand contact than by droplets in the air. I'd bet that you are at far more risk when you shake hands then when you use someone else's keyboard.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I might as well start crapping on my desk, and working in the restroom.
i do not believe my desktop is more filthy than a toilet, i do not shit on my desk, unlike some MCSE admins who do lol...
how can you not use a "ass gasket"? to put your ass on a piece of plastic that some dude 5 minutes earlier was squirting out last night's undercooked/overspiced chicken curry is just plain wrong.
for the love of god, use an ass gasket when available and do not, i repeat, do not subject you ass to a public restroom toilet seat.
as for the rest of your post, i generally agree.
Occasionally using your keyboard as a toilet seat will help keep it clean.
I love how this is mostly people pointing out Clorox's "secret agenda" or trying to make excuses for not washing their hands after they take a shit. And then they wonder why they can't get a girlfriend.
we are talking about keyboards being more germ-laden then the average toilet seat. Compared to the current state of the bathroom in my apartment, my keyboard area is suitable for performing brain surgury.
On a lighter note....that was some darn good chili.
are invited to my house!
the wife is always suggesting that I "Get my ass off the computer?"
1. Pick up your keyboard with two hands.
2. Invert 180 degrees.
3. Shake vigorously.
4. Sweep detritus from desk.
5. Repeat as necessary.
(You should replace it when the keys fall out, or when it's too sticky for anything to fall out.)
This seems more like an advertisment to sell disinfectant wipes. Assuming you wash your hands before you eat and aren't licking your keyboard you have little to worry about. There are bacteria everywhere, it is NORMAL for them to be EVERYWHERE, if anything trying to kill all the bacteria in your envionment might be detrimental.. If you start swabbing and culturing everything you will jsut end up OCD and living in a bubble. I mean hell, ever seen what grows when you swab money?
I spend most of both my professional and personal time on the tolit. So I guess I will be ok.
Later
Got to go.
Biotech computers are faster and smaller than silicon based technologies. Dirty keyboards are just the first step to the new age of computing. If the theory of evolution is correct, the bacteria in my keyboard should mutate and merge with the digital parts of my workstation.
I work in an office where one retard in a cube literally washes his desk, monitor, keyboard and mouse in alcohol (rubbing) before he'll start to work. There are folks in this office that share workstations - he is not one of them.
Besides not seeing that fact that he's just dissenfecting himself from himself, he's no doubt slowly eating away at the plastic, releasing God knows what kind of poly-vinyl-chloride hell, not to mention the alcohol fumes themselves. I can smell it in my office - a good 15 feet away.
Anyway, i wanted to find some litereature like "Alcohol is bad for plastic computer components becuase:", but it looks i'll have to fight the "You're a dirty bastard" crowd too.
Damn!
Guess i'll just unplug his network cable.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
The article did have one quote that caught me off guard.
Anyone have any humorous reasons that explain how the urine gets on the keyboards?
Once or twice I've taken my laptop with me into my bathroom to "handle business".... I guess I am doubly at risk.
So I'm at risk from the bacteria in my keyboard, but at least no one is planting a cherry bomb in it.
-- dan.sherman
for this
Back in the early days when as a programmer/analyst I still got to work on things (now everyone hires 'techs') I was called to a keyboard on an ADDS VP60 terminal which had stopped working. This wasn't too uncommon since keyboards frequently became the home of:
Staples (pulled from pages)
Paperclips
Dust, Hair, Fingernail bits, etc., though usually not conductive
Yecch (you only know what this is if you've taken apart keyboards, others, you don't want to know, i.e. magic nose goblins)
Food spillage
I examined the offending keyboard and noticed some of the caps were wet. When asked about the presence of coffee, Coke, or any other beverage, the user said "no, haven't had anything like that anywhere around it", had anyone else sat there recently, "no, they'd been sitting there for over an hour when it froze up." To everyone's astonishment I then picked up the board by its cord and watched it drip something on the desk approximating: Coffee, heavy on cream with sugar (probably 3 lumps judging by the size of the user) . Those were the days when we could take a keyboard entirely apart and wash it in the bathroom sink, towel dry and reassemble good as new. Sadly, even being trapped in one's own lies doesn't seem to discourage users from keeping a full cuppa near the electrical bits.
Quick question: How much damage to a PC would a good soaking with coffee do? Fry anything?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is this a repost? I seem to recall seeing this topic posted a few weeks ago. Maybe it was something different...
God is real unless declared integer.
That Microsoft's Spell checker will identify the word: "Mysophobia" (the fear of germs) as being mispelled and offer a recommendation of "Gynophobia" (the fear of women)...
Dear God! Our poor little babies being babysat by the computers are catching bacterial infections from our filthy, filthy electronics!
Support the Child Online Cleanliness Act (COCA) to mandate child-safe bacterial filters on all library computers!
Stop the scourge of scurvy being brought home by your children using the same computer as some scuzzy homeless person!
Lord knows I always keep a box of handy-wipes by the computer for, um, cleanliness' sake.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I don't know about you, but I installed a workstation right in front of my throne, just so that certain annoying biological functions don't get in the way of Everquest or reading Slashdot. The keyboard rests comfortably in my lap while typing, although the splashback (cumulatively over time) has begun to make it kinda gross on the bottom. When I have particularly bad indigestion or food poisoning, the splashback factor is strong enough to reach even the computer screen.
Hmm, it'd appear that while typing this, my pointing device just slipped between my legs and landed in the water. Oh well, I'll just dry it off...
Anyway, for some strange reason, none of my friends come over for network parties anymore, and those who do always want to bring their own computers... The nerve! I always buy the best hardware money can buy, and they want to use their own. Hmmph! Some friends they are! Note: not all my workstations are located in my bathrooms - one of them is located in my bedroom and just happens to be surrounded by wads of crumpled kleenexes, but otherwise appears to be pretty clean.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
..they must all be killing eachother off because i average about 12 hours a day on my computer, and for the past 8 years i have gotten sick once.
The Truth: There is no string:)
My question is this: how the heck to people make their keyboards so dirty? Mine stays pure and clean (at least in appearance) and I don't ever clean it or wash my hands before using it. On the other hand, new keyboards at work stay new looking for about three months. (Monitors get messed up even faster...I don't understand people who touch their monitors)
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
I think the parent's point was that nobody seemed to care that he was cleaning his keyboard with a vacuum at the end of the day, suggesting it is commonplace. One wonders if this was foreshadowing a future for us all where everything is sterile.
We all watched the movie and got the point...
From the article: The average office desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat, according to a new University of Arizona study.
From the slashdot article: computer workstations harbour 400 times more health threatening bacteria
Note that the article makes no mention that the bacteria they found were a health threat. News flash! There are ten times as many bacterial cells in your intestines as human cells in your whole body. Not all bacteria are a health hazard, in fact many species are quite helpful in digestion and competing against disease causing bacteria for food and residence. Your entire skin is crawling with the little buggers. I've never heard of computers being a significant reservoir of any type of disease causing agent, but any microbiologists out there feel free to enlighten me.
That should be, "All your soul are belong to us."
If they find that keyboards more germ infested than toilet seats...
I don't know about you, but personally this begs the question:
What are people doing on their keyboards?
who seem to spend quite a bit of personal time in front of the toilet, generally right after spending too much personal time in front of a bottle.
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
A lot of pastors have been against Bush regarding federal funding for religious activities. However, I choose not to support the initiative because the site groups "Athiests and freethinkers" against me, when as a Chrisitian, I agree with thier political agenda. I'm also arguably a lot more "free thinking" then most secular humanists (it's not exactly popular to believe in God within scientific circles). The whole "us vs. them" is really creating a divide that makes everyone look close minded, when in reality, there are both open and close minded people with a very diverse set of beliefs. I hope that as you support this organization you consider these points. Regardless, let's just hope that we maintain the seperation from Church and State.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
If workstations are this bad, imagine how poor PCs are; I'm sure everybody has munched some chips or tossed back a beverage while reading /. or playing Diablo. (The Archbishop Lazarus and his evil succubi once made me spill beer on my ten-year-old brick-like "invincible" IBM 286 keyboard. Unfortunately, Anheisuer Busch made it vincible.) It reminds me of playing Nintendo years ago at my buddy Kris' house; he would always eat dinner while playing Zelda or whatever, then give me the "dinner controller" when we'd play two-player RBI Baseball. Not only was the button response time gimpy from the constant Zelda-playing, but the directional-pad was all greasy with ghosts of dinners past. One day I moved the D-pad to the right and a piece of rancid corn came oozing out . From then on, I insisted on bringing over an extra controller from my house.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
I worked as an electrical engineer doing control systems in workplace that is probably one of the most unsanitary- a wastewater treatment plant.
People only got sick when people passed the flu or cold from one person to another- an they usually caught the bug from their kids.
As for cleaning up equipment that has been, um, soiled- generally, if it's water-proofed, just bleach to disinfect and deorderize. If it's not water-proofed, I'm not sure what is done. Probably soak in bleach then throw it away.
I've learned two things from that job:
1) Wash your hands.
2) *hit flows downhill.
If you have a strong immune system, these bacteria aren't going to affect you. (*)
If you have a weak immune system, you are very likely to get sick no matter what - quite possibly very sick - with or without using "anti-bacterial" products - unless you isolate yourself in a bubble, like people with Severe Combined ImmunoDeficiency (SCID, a.k.a. bubble boy syndrome) have to.
(*) Same applies to many viruses. Some people in experiments had live cold virus put up their nose! Some of the people did not get sick. Why? Because their immune system was strong.
Not letting your immune system even fight normal battles makes it both ineffective - leading to more infections, not less, and overreactive - leading to more allergies, asthma and even auto-immune diseases (such as Lupus and MS).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Pathogenic bacteria are generally not going to be phototrophic either, they are specialized at getting energy from their human host, not the sunlight. So I don't think the lamps make any difference at all. In fact, most labs that study pathogenic bacteria grow them up in dark incubators anyway.
I would like to see a study done to figure out how many geeks are complete and total slobs. I typically refuse to work on stations that are sloppy and nasty. I also try to clean them every time I work on them.
I've been working professionally as an SA for almost 12 years. Some of the nastiest, dirtiest and most intelligent people I have ever met are computer scientists, software engineers, network guys (Especially Cisco guys??Why ??), etc...
I have seen chicken bones, half eaten sandwiches, milk cartons that contain some sort of lumpy semi-solid substance.
My personal favorite was a software engineer. He lived off of Oreo cookies and used to peel them apart when eating them. He typically did not eat the side with no filling and would create massive stacks next to his monitor. Once every few months he would clear it off.
It's not only food related either. In general, I have met more computer folks who have no idea what in the hell personal hygiene means. Bad teeth, bad smell, greasy hair, and are generally in bad physical shape. Hey walking to the vending machine to get the next pack of oreo's does not count as excercise.
Ohhh, your a naughty little birdy...
Finaly, hiegene is really bad for us Humans cause it makes us less resistant against all kind of bacteria, we should be open for them, learn too know them and find a way to kill them, but then we first need to be infected by them, doh. So keep those keyboards dirty if ye art wise...
Quazion.
Men clean workstations, and women clean toilets...
My other sig is extremely clever...
I know you're kidding, but I used to install computer systems in junkyards.
We're talking people with "offices" made out of old railroad cars, and grease/oil/whatever on the lot so thick you'd swear it would catch fire when somebody tossed a cigarette butt. Keyboards with crust so thick, you couldn't read the keys.
One box came back with half an inch of dust INSIDE the computer. It still worked, but needed a HD upgrade.
And now Clorox's marketing types are trying to get me concerned about the keyboard/mouse at my current (fully indoor, with trash removal, and everything) office? Bwaahahah.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
if only i had mod points
Gee, I better keep this in mind next time I sit my naked arse on my computer. Oh, wait...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This doesn't really come as a surprise... have you seen the people sitting in front of computers? Filthy!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I just spray a little on the top of the keyboard and some around the desk to mop up the coffee and soda rings. That and I smoke heavily so the nicotine stains need some soaping up.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Eat some lead every day.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Eat some mercury every day.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Contract smallpox.
That which has a 30% chance of killing you, and doesn't makes you stronger.
Shoot yourself in the lung.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
What you don't know about the influence of genetics on the immune system, is about what George W. Bush doesn't know about the English language.
If I ever meet you, I'll offer you my penis to shake instead of my hand... you shouldn't mind.
Actually, contrary to what most people believe, Marketing is not defined as "Create Demand". While I'm not saying that no one attempts to create demand, it is not marketing.
One definition of marketing is: MARKETING includes identifying unmet needs; producing products and services to meet those needs: and pricing, distributing, and promoting those products and services to produce a profit. - Learnthat.com
The demand is there whether marketing is around or not. I'll bet you'd be hard-pressed to find parents with small children who weren't concerned about their child's health and safety. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people obsessed with cleanliness in the States (although I fall into the same category as yourself about the whole microbe situation).
Remember, think before you post. Just because you think one way doesn't mean you can speak for all of America.
what they fail to mention is what kind of bacteria is growing. Even if there are 400 times more bacteria on the keyboard they are no where near as effective as the small amout of E-coli on your toilet seat that is enough to give you the dirty squirts for the next few weeks. DONT lick the toilet seat!!!
People are way too germophobic these days. Face it: Bacteria are everywhere. You can't avoid them. Just live with it.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I've always looked at this way: my girlfriend is willing to put it in her mouth, so could it possibly be so dirty that handling it makes my hands disease ridden?
... carnal delights? :)
And I'm being pretty much serious here - or am I the only person who doesn't shower down before partaking in
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I guess it won't be that long until these bacteria start making those utterly pointless "first post" posts to Slashdot. Hell, they're probably already more mentally developed that most of those lamers..
The box says it kills more viruses than any other desktop antivirus program. What do you use to clean your desktop PC?
Shit. My net girlfriend won't even be legal!
Read the headline...take a glance at the milimiter thick
crust of dirt over the keyboard. Decide to read along -
these are not the news I am looking for.
-><- no
Is it just me or is all of this really quite moot. Between what we are exposed to outside naturally or what we subject ourselves to daily what is on our workstation is hardly going to really make a difference one way or another
:-)
Keep in mind that one of things people do while taking breaks from typing is to rub their eyes. Certain parts of the eyes, such as the cornea don't get alot of direct blood flow, so fighting off infection is more difficult. Trying to work on a computer with an eye infection that just doesn't seem to want to go away is not fun.
Also, most sane people will wash their hands after using the toliet. Most people do not wash their hands before or after using a keyboard/mouse - so perhaps we shouldn't disregard this warning.
I do agree with you that markerters in the U.S. push anti-bacterial soaps and products. I don't really see the need for it. I'll just wash my hands with soap and water. If I get a cut, I'll use good 'ol rubbing alcohol. The sting means it's working.
I would also question whether all soaps are antibacterial. Dial, for instance, has the active ingredient triclocarban, which has been used as an antiseptic since the 60s. While that's common in many soaps, not all soaps (particularly "natural" soaps) have it, or something like it.
According to HealthAtoZ.com, over 75% of liquid soaps and almost 30% or bar soaps are indeed antibacterial. While this is a lot, it's far from saying "ALL soaps are antibacterial" (or antibacterialogical, for that matter).
--
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
If you are like most people in our culture, you probably have to think pretty hard to remember your last serious bacterial infection. Actually, you probably were unaware of it, because it was a mild case of food poisoning, and you were over it by the next day. Most of our common illnesses are viral. The major bacterial infections healthy people have to deal with routinely are food poisoning (where there is probably a pretty large dose of bacteria and/or toxin) and local infections. So unless you have had an infected finger, you probably haven't picked up a bacterial infection from your keyboard.
Now viruses are another matter. People mainly catch colds from other people's hands (they touch their runny nose, they touch something else, you touch it, you touch your nose, bingo). Shared keyboards probably play a role here, but probably less than handshaking, doorknobs, railings, and telephone handsets....
And somehow, we all manage to live through it.
...and the worst thing you can do is to start scrubbing down everything with antibacterial products. This will result in resistant strains of bacteria.
Not nearly as bad as idiots demanding antibiotics for colds (it's a virus, idiot, antibiotics won't help), but bad enough.
The problem is, it's getting more and more difficult to buy a non-antibacterial soap. There's always Ivory, though I don't like it much (dries my skin).
You can't have any. And don't try licking my toilet either. I don't like sitting where its sticky.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
urin and skat fetishests are saying "Well look whos so sick now!"
Carpe meam simiam!
My keyboards are a dirty mess. I have an odd condition that begins with an "S", who's name I can't remember that essentially boils down to this: "I shed and replace my skin faster than most people". The process whereby the outer layers die and flake off, as new layers are built underneath happens about 2 or 3 times as fast with me as with most people. Most of the time I don't notice any detrimental effects from this. Most of the effects are mere quirks and not really disadvantages: When I get a sunburn, the burned skin all peals away in a matter of days and I'm back to my pasty-white self inside a week. When I wash my hair in the morning, I have dandruff again by the afternoon. And my keyboard "snows" flakes when I turn it upside down and shake it once every few days.
<P>
So in my case I can definately believe it that my keyboard has more germs living in it than a toilet seat.
<P>
But the point is, my keyboard is only used by *me*. I'm only being exposed to the germs that came out of my own body anyway. A toilet seat isn't like that. Toilet seats might be "cleaner", but they have more different people using them.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I hate it when studies toss facts up with no context. They are either trying to scare people or get attention. There was another study that found your kitchen counter has far more germs than the average toilet seat. They stated toilet seats contain few germs because they are usually very dry (for those of us that have good aim).
So ignore the study and when your keys start sticking buy another keyboard.
Did these workstations have a fufme drive installed? For those not in the know http://www.fu-fme.com/
Of course, we all need to follow basic hygiene procedures. But I think there's scope for quite a reduction in the number of antibacterial etc. products we use, in favour of keeping our bodies' natural defences up to the job.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
...is actually usually the dishrags used in many people's kitchen sinks. This cloth is used to rub down food from dishes, picking up food into the fibres. The damp cloth, with miniscule bits of food in it is then set out for the next time--the readily available water and substrate make it a haven for log growth of aerobic bacteria. These high counts are then available for the next washing. Cell counts can end up being very high if the dishrags are not changed.
More biochemistry trivia: at a public bathroom at the mall, there is 2x the number of infectious bugs on the walls in the female bathroom, since small children more often go with their mother to the washroom, and small children touch their eyes/mouth and then the wall with a high frequency.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
In fact, other tests show that toilets are more germ-free than kitchens. But no-one's rushing to eat of toilet seats.
I think it's more "shock value".
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I was an intern at a company and doing software testing in highschool. One of the managers' name was Gary. In the lab I worked in w/ 25 computers, I had to keep towels nearby because ANY time he used a computer he left gary juice on it. Dont know what it was - not sweat because it didn't dry off, not a typical oil, just gary juice.
I came up with ways of keeping him out of the lab so that he never touched one of my machines. Talk about motivation to go talk to your managers.
to email me: take my
At least two different times we were forced to get samples of stuff from public places and grow the samples. One was in high school and the other at 1st year university biology class. The results were quite interesting.
Toilets came out as one of the least active surfaces along with parionoid mother's kitchens.
The worst things were food trays in fast food places (their toilets were much cleaner), the water tap handles in fast food places, the door handles in fast food bathrooms.
We had done keyboards as well but I don't remember them as being any worse than most surfaces.
...is that you?
I doubt many people catch that many diseases from toilets. I know it's common for people to become paranoid about using a public toilet for health reasons, but it's absurd.
The problem I have with public toilets isn't that there are all these invisible bacteria necessarily. But damn, does NO ONE (here in NJ, at least) know how to flush a toilet?? I cannot believe these people. You go into a public restroom and most of the toilets are still filled with other peoples "waste product." Like, damn, you pooped in the toilet, now flush it you moron.
Personally I'm more afraid of getting STDs from a toilet than picking up some (somewhat) common bateria from it. Not that I'm crazily afraid of diseases, but that's a decent medium to transmit it by, and, referring to my previous comment, I just don't feel reassured.
Getting back to the topic, though, some people have really nasty keyboards. You know the ones. When IT upgrades their computers and someone else gets their old system, it's the latter person who gets the new keyboard and mouse.
I ate a lot of lead-based paint as a child. My father had access to mercury and played with it like modern kids have pokemon. Its not a big deal. Allergies are caused by excessive and obsessive attention to cleanliness (which if you think about it, is an un-natural state).
my keyboard evolved so far, it types this note by itself.
As most females, my hands hover above my keyboard when I type.
When people first started living in cities there were many health problems. Isolated disease related deaths became epidemics. Huge amounts of sewage and other waste products caused disease. And inadequate food and water also caused problems. That is why the Black Plague was so awful.
Increased cleanliness has drastically improved our health and our quality of life. It has gotten to the point that we don't worry as much about more serious diseases and instead worry about allergies. I bet lots of people had allergies hundreds of years ago but with all the smallpox, malaria, dysentery, cholera and other horrible diseases they didn't bitch about it.
I work at a hospital. During employee orientation (*all* employees), they have this cool exercise. At the start of the day, they ask you to wash your hands with this special evaporating liquid soap. It feels slighltly oily, but since its alcohol-based, it evaporates after a minute or two of rubbing your hands together.
Then you listen to some corporate spiel about our history.
Then you're asked to wash your hands with regular soap and water.
Then you get some blood tests done (hepatitis and something else).
Then you wash your hands again (again, regular soap and water).
Then you get a spiel on the importance of cleanliness in the worksplace.
Wash your hands again.
Here's the interesting part. After your last batch of hand-washing, you're asked to put your hands under a UV light. The 'special' soap that was used in the beginning was actually a UV tagging liquid. Even the most compulsive of hand-washers wind up with tons of flourescent crap under their nails and in the cracks of their hands.
Gives the OCD people something else to keep them awake at night and makes Joe Schmoe think "Huh! Maybe I *should* wash my hands when I come out of the crapper!"
It's amazing how people worry about this sort of thing. Yes, it's interesting to know, but all the people who worry about it is really funny. Think about that door you just opened, that bus seat you sat on. Take even a brand new car, what about the greasy-plumbers-crack guy working on the assembly line who just installed your steering wheel, that your probably going to kiss when you get your car. Fact is, life is full of germs, thankfully we can't see most of them.
Join the Linux Generation. #LinuxGeneration on EFnet Linux Counter #249871
Practice safe hex - wear gloves!
Clorox.
Clorox also happens to sell...
Clorox Disinfecting Wipes (for your dirty, dirty desk)
Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner (for the pooper)
This just in...
A recent study funded by Tylenol indicates that
9/10 americans have a head ache right now. Are you at risk?
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
If I drop a cookie on my desk do I still have five seconds to pick it up and eat it?
:)
If I drop a cookie in the toilet, I'll just consider that skipping the middleman and leave it there
If only we could find a way of converting toilet seats into input devices, things would be a lot cleaner. Infact I already use the toilet seat in conjuction with my output devices.
Then can I hits your fingers with a hammer and smash your toes with a brick? Then I'd also like to kidney punch you. If you don't die, they hey what's the problem?
Tricoslan isn't an antibiotic, it's an antiseptic, and it's got other neat properties. Like belonging to a class of carcinogenic chemicals.
I understand the little buggers have a hard time developing a resistance to fire though.
Surprise! Your mouth is even dirtier than your keyboard probably, and demonstratably dirtier than the mouth of a dog or cat.
BUT, there is a large difference between the microorganisms occupying your skin and computer and those that MIGHT be in your toilet (or on it).
i.e. Giardia, E. Coli, Clostridia, Salmonella, Shigella are all GI tract infectious and will make you really sick (as a bonus it only takes about five shigella to infect a person), but your skin houses things like Proprionobacterium acnes which won't make you sick but will make your acne worse.
Skin also houses some staphylococcus species but they usually won't cause trouble unless the get inside you in some way.
HTH,
Keith
P.S. I knew studying for medical boards would come in handy someday!
How NOT to wash your keyboard!
I will, however, stop wiping my buggers under the desk.
I never disinfect my computer area and I only get sick about once a year. So BFD.
I get annoyed with these stories that talk about germs being in all sorts of places we never knew about before. If it's not making me sick, why should I care if there's germs on my mouse? Or the lip of my pop can? Or on the bathroom's door handle? Etc....
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Consider.
Bowling ball holes receive your sweat as you pick up the ball. Not to mention the sweat of everyone else who's used the same 15 year old loaner. Within the dark finger chambers, bacteria thrive and multiply, unchecked by an entire absence of cleaning either by you or the alley personnel. The difficulty of cleansing the awkwardly shaped passages essentially guarantees free reign!
Then, as the ball traverses the lane it exchanges filth that pours from the finger holes onto the lane with the filth already there from countless prior bowlers. Undoubtedly, these bactieria interbreed and thrive especially on trace amounts of cheese curl particulate matter and beer from your fingers now delivered to the waiting alley micro dwellers.
Lastly, you pick up your newly bacterially diversified polyurethane orb, and transfer these microbes inside yourself as you subsequently ingest hot dogs, fries and other finger foods between frames.
Think about it. Don't bowl. Lick a toilet seat instead. It's healthier.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Considering some of the crappy code I've seen!
Anyone remember certain HP2600-series terminals which had a key labeled AIDS? Brought up the setup menus or something...
These terminals were popular just in the early days when the news started to come in about this mysterious disease that was showing up in "gay men and Haitians."
We had a student assistant in our computer center and one day for a gag he came in wearing rubber gloves. He would wait for people to ask why he was wearing them and then he'd say "because I don' t want to contact any keyboard with AIDS," pointing to the HP key...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
How do expect to have a healthy immune system if you don't exercise it with a little bit of bacteria.
Journal
whoops spilled a damn coke in my keyboard again.
and that's "nature".
but let the neighbor's dog do it, and that's against the law.
people talk about germs and microbes like they're toxic waste...but let's face it your hands come in cantact with a lot more nasty stuff as the day goes by than your ass.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Yeah, but it's MY bacteria...
Sure, it's filth, but it's *my* filth. At worst my keyboard's no more disgusting than my nose and/or underware both put together. As bad as that may be, I've already caught anything that's likely to be there, so it's really not a risk for me.
But God help you if you come into my office and try to dink on my machine while I'm away at lunch. Huh, now to think of it, that may be what happened to my group's last secretary.
I just cleaned my keyboard yesterday. I took the entire thing apart (keys and all) and cleaned every bit of it with an old toothbrush. You would be surprised and disgusted by how much filth was in there. I'd had the keyboard for 3 years and never cleaned it, so it was definately more than due. Yeck
400 times more? Who cares? The bacteria on toilet-seats are actually quite minimal, the climate is too dry which makes it hard for them to actually survive there for longer periods of time. So logically workstations - even with 400 times more bacteria - shouldn't be very dirty.
We have an immune-system for a reason, and like us it needs to be trained. Bacteria-hysteria is actually making us more sick. A real world example of this is my aunt and my cousins. She was a hygiene-freak when we were younger, washing everything daily, making sure the kids washed properly after being on the toilet etc. What happened was exactly the opposite. My cousins still have poor immune-systems, getting sick all too often.
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
Now take a look at this website.
Well?
The study revealed that telephones had the highest levels of bacteria. So does this mean that we need phone sanitizers after all?
Little living things on my keyboard, how disgusting! Give me a break.
Well at least parents will not have to worry about their children's immune systems becomming too depresssed. I guess the modern day analogy to eating dirt will be licking the keyboard.
-.sig sauer-
Everything harbors more germs than a tiolet seat! Why do you think that is always the comparison? Guess what, urine is nice and sterile. There are 0 germs in urine and they don't grow to well in the stuff. One of the cleanest substances around, but we still find it disgusting. However germy work areas are, this comparison sucks.
It's so scientific to say 400 times dirtier than your average toilet... what toilet, what average?? In our office the toilets get cleaned at least once a day. No wonder a keyboard or whatever is much more dirty in comparison....
keep your immune system up to date!
Just looked at my keyboard, and it's grubby as hell. Cool :-D
I dont know about you folks (i've seen/smelled some incredibliy dirty geeks across the time)but I clean my Keyboard 3x a year. Not so much the bacteria but hairs/dust/grease/plain old dirt are what bothers me. (remove keys, wash, brush dirt out of frame (*bleech*), etc.) :-). Without the M$ Key (they where build way befor that time). He!
:-))).
I once picked up a KB from Fleamarket. It was incredibly filthy - kinda in the sticky goo stage, specially around the keys (JUCK!). Anyway, I took it home, removed the Keycaps (IBM Model M build 1985), stuffed them in a clothbag, put that in the washing machine (50 degrees centigrade will do fine), cleaned the frame with dishwash and a scrubbing sponge (no,not the electronics), dried it with the hairdryer, assembled it back together and - wammo - had myself a top notch, shiny as new IBM Model M KB. Armor plating and all
Moral: If that guy would have cleaned his KB only ONCE, he would have noticed WHAT KIND it was - and wouldn't have sold it to me for 2$
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
James Jamerson was the bass player on the great majority of the Motown hits (Supremes, Four Tops, etc.).
He claimed that the dirt on the fingerboard was a major source of the FUNK, so he never cleaned it.
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
Bacteria mutate?
You herectic!
Evolution is evil. Did not you know that?
You'll rot in hell.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In fact, there's a decent chance that a lot of that orange stuff isn't bacterial slime at all, but microscopic species of diatoms and red algae. They're naturally found in moist environments like stream banks and wet rocks. Their propagules (just call 'em spores, OK?) float around in the air and grow when they land in a suitable environment. You also carry them in on your shoes. No problem; you keep the sink basically clean, because you report that "The tiny crevice they occupy hasn't gotten any larger in the last year" - yeah, I get that you prob'ly mean that the orange hasn't expanded beyond the crevice.
The answer is to do just what you've been doing. You might do the bleach-and-a-toothbrush routine when you're expecting really fussy company, but otherwise, don't worry about it.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
Remember, that which does not kill you, makes you stronger.
how'd it taste?
hah!
In fact, by killing off friendly bacteria, antibacterial soaps can make you more susceptible to infection. And I remember when, in microbi lab, we incubated agar plates that had been touched by hands before and after washing. The ones after washing actually had more bacteria (due to the pores being opened up by the hot water), but there were was a greater variety of organisms on the ones before washing...
Cute. Since I took Bio 1001 about 8-9 years ago, I really don't know what the wording he used was, to be quite honest.
Since the dictionary.com definition of "antibacterial" is "Destroying or inhibiting the growth of bacteria", I'd say that most, if not all soaps fit the bill - killing bacteria or slowing their growth - even if they don't have an specific antibiotic additive. Perhaps the mildest soaps wouldn't be able to kill bacteria, or make it difficult for them to grow.
If you really want to correct people's wording, you should also mention that the parent to my post uses the word "finace" instead of "fiancee". Of course, depending on his relationship, I guess that could be accurate.