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Lifting The Lid On Computer Filth
IainMH writes "There's a story over at BBC News about how work stations contain nearly 400 times as many microbes than lavatories. Gross. 'A desk is capable of supporting 10 million bacteria and the average office contains 20,961 germs per square inch, according to research. ... By contrast, the average toilet seat contains 49 germs per square inch, the survey showed.'"
I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Most of us sneeze on our hands, not our asses.
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
Just remember that its 'your' bacteria plus the bacteria off of everything you touched before using your workstation. Grab a cup of coffee? Open a door? Use the office toliet? Its all your hand, and thusly your workstation.
I guarantee you, if you cleaned your toilet as often as you clean your computer, it would (a) be utterly filthy, and (b) reek like nothing you've ever experienced before.
Not only is this old news (I remember hearing about how keyboards are more germy than toilets years and years ago), but its also not even that surprising if you stop to think about it, as the average toilet is disinfected quite regularly while the average workstation/keyboard is almost never even subjected to a basic dusting or wash, let alone a disinfectant.
Yeah, it's gross, but not at all surprising... I work in a cube farm where it's pretty much common knowledge that touching any of the equipment is going to be worse bacteria-wise than doing pushups on the mensroom floor (one of the stranger things I've seen in my cube farm days). And when you consider that equipment is shared between people on different shifts, and how strongly people are discouraged from calling in sick when they're sick, you start to get a very good picture of the kind of biological warfare taking place in the cracks between the keys. You can pick up more germs in this office by typing "WMD" than you would pick up from being attacked with one.
And don't even get me started on the transmission of scabies in shared upholstered swiveling office chairs...
[Z?]
Seriously. All manner of filth just accumulates just below the keys.
I'd like to know why no one has come up with a decent, washable keyboard. Most of the ones on the market are way too expensive are just too impratical. Are there some engineering problems with the design? Outside of the whole water-and-electricity-don't-mix thing I mean.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I never have understood this obsession of counting the number of small living creatures around us. Now, count what behaviors/locations are more likely to make us actually sick, and you've got my interest, but it's pretty rare I see a study that actually says something along the lines of "cleaning with anti-bacterials will reduce the likelyhood of you getting sick" (in fact, I've only seen ones that show no difference).
The human body has evolved to be pretty capable of protecting against the things around us people now call "gross", and the rarer diseases that we come in contact with generally aren't stopped by staying "clean" anyhow.
The desk has people respirating over it and sneezing in the area. Everybody is going out, touching various things, tossing out bad stuff from the office fridge and then borrowing a stapler. It's likely got a significantly wider range of bacteria and viruses that can cause infection in a human.
--
Evan "And the worst thing out there are buffets, especially the salad bars"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
My solution is to do nothing.
Modern society's obsession with disinfecting everything is weakening our immune systems. Your body is meant to be exposed to these kind organisms and such exposure strengthens your resistance.
Toilet seats are flat and non-porous. They're easy to clean and there's nowhere for bits of food to go. The reputation for toilet seats being "dirty" is rather unfounded unless someone shits or pisses all over them. And while urine is disgusting and I don't want to sit in it, it's actually almost always sterile.
Bacteria usually need food to multiply on. People don't tend to eat in bathrooms, but they do eat at a desk. Keyboards are filled with places for dust, food, moisture, etc to collect. Great places for bacteria to multiply. Keyboards are also very hard to clean, and almost impossible to clean well because of all the spaces inside them.
What upsets me most though is the comparison to toilet seats that winds up in every "thing X has this many germs/inch article". In understanding anything context and perspective is king. The implications is that if something is dirtier than a toilet seat, it just MUST be dirty as hell. It's a rare article that points out that maybe the premise (toilet seats are really dirty) is at fault. I'd be more interested in comparisons to things that ARE dirty, like a cutting board after having cut raw meat on it. Unfortunately articles like these always end up as the "interesting little tidbit" articles in newspapers where they have to grab your attention and don't have time for things like giving out real information.
AccountKiller
As long as you power it down AFAP (yank from wall if necessary) water is not that damamging to electronics. If not cleaned up it can delaminate PCBs and destroy caps, but if left off and dried well it'll work fine. Other things, esp sticky thinks (soda, get your minds outa the gutter...) can be cleaned up by rinsing with water and then drying. Not a fix 100% of the time, but usually works out pretty well.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."