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. "

Comments

Getting things out of proportion

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Getting things out of proportion

[Ivan the Terrible]

It's actually even worse than just getting things out of proportion since using germicidal wipes doesn't kill all the bacteria.

The bacteria that do survive are resistant to the germicide and have an ample food supply (all their competitors were killed off). If any of these newly evolved resistant bacteria are harmful to humans, we now have a problem.

Hospitals are increasingly fighting infections by bacteria that are resistant to all known drugs. The major cause seems to be antibacterial supplements in chicken and cattle feed.

So next time you wipe down that counter with Clorox-guaranteed-to-kill-99.9%-of-all-germs, think about how happy the remaining 0.1% of those buggers are going to be, and remember, they do know how to multiply.

Coming soon... "QWERTY-WIPES"

[rot26]

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?

Re:Coming soon... "QWERTY-WIPES"

[SecurityGuy]

Well that's the interesting thing. They didn't "find that a common workplace/home device is direly in need of disinfecting". They found that it had lots of bacteria. Our non-thinking consumers will rush out to buy disinfectant products because they presume it's a problem. If they want to show anything at all meaningful, they need to correlate bacterial concentration on the keyboard with illnesses. I don't care if my keyboard has bacteria on it, I care if it has bacteria on it that can actually cause me problems.

Re:makes sense

[saider]

I'll bet your mouth has even more germs than your keyboard.

But really, isn't this what we have immune systems for? If we spent all our time chasing every last germ, we'd end up like Howard Huges or Mr Burns.

This is obviously the basis for a marketing campaign by the Clorox company.

Funded by The Clorox Company?

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:Americans are obsessed with microbes

[Jerf]

Speaking as an American, I assure you that we are not overly obsessed with microbes. We do put a higher premium on cleanliness and lower levels of BO then some other cultures, but that's basically a cultural thing to do with our noses, not our microbes.

What we do have is the world's most advanced Advertising System. Remember the definition of marketing: "Create demand". Most of what you see as microbe obsession is actually our advertising industry, trying its darndest to create an obsession with microbes.

By and large, they only succeed right where it probably does the most damage, with some parents of small children, which is of course a lot of people, but hardly the whole country. Most of the rest of us do not consider it a terribly big deal, up to and including the small children. ;-)

If all you watch is our advertising, you get a pretty skewed idea of our country, because what you really see is what Corporate America wants it to be. That does not always correspond to reality, and I dare say here's one place it has largely failed. We're not obsessive about microbes on a macro scale.

Note: I'd be surprised if there's a lot of bacteria in Coke. First, I'm sure the water's sterilized, probably distilled, same for the rest of the ingredients. This is a *good thing*, necessary for any product like Coke. (Consider pasteurization.) Second, that's one nasty environment for bacteria to grow in; I know some forms of mold can manage (don't ask), but it takes a lot of time... radiation hazards are usually seriously overstated (again for essentially marketing reasons; the people most worried about radiation are the ones least able to understand it, and so there are people capatalizing on this). Paint fumes and metal dust are probably underrated.