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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 discovered this in high school... we were growing cultures on petri dishes and were given 2 dishes each, we had to open them for 1 minute in a location of our choosing... I exposed 1 in our toilet and 1 in the middle of the cricket oval. The petri dish exposed in the toilet didn't grow a single bloody thing, the one from the oval looked like a terrarium after 2 days. Our teacher told us that because toilets are cleaned regularly with hardcore chemicals not much grows in them. But I've stopped licking the phone after reading the article, and I don't spit-clean my mouse ball anymore.
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
One thought that occurred to me was to get an air purifier... one that circulates air with a HEPA filter. Does anyone use one of these in their computer rooms and does it actually make a difference as far as dust goes? They also have ones with UV lightbulbs, maybe this would cut down on the microbe populations? I'm more concerned with the constant accumulation of dust than anything else.
Really, when you think of your computer area, you don't think of bacteria as you would when you think about a bathroom, so you're less inclined to clean it to the extent you would a bathroom. But either way, pretty much everything else is as equally as bacteria ridden. It's like the test they did on Myth Busters where they tested to see if a tooth brush left by the toilet would really pick up fecal matter, and they found out that tooth brushes all over the building had the same amount of fecal matter on them after a month of use.
Buckethead
I'll seccond that. I'm in a college dorm, and as the local computer guru, I get called upon all the time to fix "broken" machines and install hardware (hey, easy money). I ran into one computer that someone inherited from a friend who recently graduated. The power supply was on the blink and the machine would only turn on "when it wanted to." Opening the case showed the horrible truth: All the once PCB green cards and motherboard were covered in gray fur. There was a good five years of dorm room dust coating every surface, not to mention several moths I pulled from behind the bezel. I had to take the whole think outside with an air duster to get anywhere near the power supply. I didnt actually open the PS once I had it out, but the cloud of dust that arrose when I dropped it in the dumpster told me all I needed to know.
Moral of the story? Keep it clean!
The main concern with the bacteria that live in your colon is that they break down the things that you find indigestible (cellulose, left over protein etc) and produce toxic byproducts. These toxic byproducts are the dangerous things and have to be expelled regularly. They are only safe because once they leave your body, you generally don't eat them up again. The workstation bacteria are probably mostly air bacteria that have found a nice area full of skin flakes and cookie crumbs to breed on. nothing to worry about.
Now if you combined the food rich environment of your keyboard with the poison producing bacteria from your colon, you start to have a real problem.
You're right. I'd never seen people with many warts on their hands (yes, I felt I had to qualify that ;)) until I worked at my first job. In fact, I'd hardly ever seen warts in my life. In that one company of about 20 people at least 5 people had 5 or more warts on their hands. Unsurprisingly I got my first wart within a year. Very virulent and took a long time to get rid of them. Before my immune system finally kicked in I had more than 30... and now I have few scars from the N2 treatment that was applied to some of them. I blame keyboards for this (and sharing them). Filthy things. Spreaders of disease!
Back when the P266 were just hitting the market I sprung and bought a dual MB all the stuff to build a system a whopping 256 meg of ram an adaptec 3940uw, all the hot harware of the day I just finished putting it all together and loaded it when I knocked my BIGGIE Coke from wendys onto the floor, well the case was off, and it all shot inside the system, I reached for the plug pulled it and went and sat down on the couch thinking about the 2k I had just blown. Well I decided to see what was salvagable so I took it all apart and rinsed it in the bathtub (seriously) and let it dry for about 5 days just to make sure. I put it all together and VOILA It worked fine. About 6 months later it started acting real odd, I assumed it was contacts had corrodd after the coke then water bath, I took the case of , it was unreal, EVERY cat and dog hair in the house had stuck to everything , and it smelled, I cant even imagine how many germs were in there, who the hell needs an Ionic Breeze I got a coke covered P266
I've always wondered why people sneeze into their hands. I think it's better to sneeze toward the ground and away from other people. Sneezing into your hands just covers them with germs, and it's not like you're going to catch them all anyway.
This is true. I lived in Asia for a few years, ate some of the most discusting things on the planet out of street stalls (usually I was really drunk), now, nothing bothers my iron gut, as I have quite the worldly bacteria living in there, takes care of just about everything.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My father-in-law recently told me a great story about this. His current customer wanted the onsite tech to swap out some 100 keyboards because they were in disgusting shape. Instead of putting the company through all the harassment of replacing the keyboards for free, he decided to try having the cafeteria steam clean the keyboards.
He tasked a couple of box monkeys with splitting the keyboards open and pulling the keyboard assemblies out, separating them from the electronics. The cafeteria ran them through the high pressure steam cleaning dishwasher system, and they came out looking and working like new! Strange but true.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Or not. I'm not scared to use a public computer, nor am I that arsed about sitting on a clean looking toilet seat.
And how many of those germs are pathogenic? Isn't that what matters? Sorry for not RTFA, but it seems people have become obsessed with germs lately. And articles like this while interesting and true, manage to create paranoia with ignorant people. Also, the kinds of germs that live on toilet seats are a little different than the kinds that live on or in your keyboard, unless strange people regularly pull their pants down and sit on your keyboard.
I was in a lecture one day and our lecturer said:
"There are about 10^13 cells in the human body. There are also about 10^14 bacteria living in and on the average human body.
That means each one of the cells in your body is outnumbered by bacteria 10-1.
Now, turn around in your seat and look at the person next to you, and think about just what you are looking at..."
(I checked the figures here)
Up here in the Great White North we had a bit of a pinkeye outbreak a few years ago. There was a particularly virulent strain that made its way onto campus, and spread like crazy via all the public computer keyboards. Word on the street was that between half and two-thirds of the campus might have had pinkeye that winter. The CDC even sent some people up to study it. Just goes to show what a few dirty keyboards can do.
How much more resilient the natural systems are. We're not dead yet. I hope some AV vendors and AI people are reading this thread.
C|N>K
Leave it to Microsoft.
Water won't damage most keyboards. My wife spilled sweetened tea into my desktop keyboard. I disconnected it and rinsed it off in the shower. I towel dried it, then left a fan blowing on it overnight. In the morning (and ever since, about two years), it has worked perfectly. The "trick" is not to operate the keyboard with water in it (plug it out as quickly as possible), and let it dry completely before plugging it back in.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
obviously you've never worked in a shared environment... my desk at the big evil corporate outsourcer where I grew bitter, was the cleanest in the place, thats only because I sterlized the bloody thing with rubbing alcohol daily. (this after being sick 5 times in 3 months.) I kept up the routine until I left that deadly place. you should have seen how dirty the disposable cloths I used were after one wipe. nasty.
You'll have to remember that primarely, computers are used by one person and one person alone--same with the immediate workspace around them.
If they are your own bacteria you're used to, they're no more harmful than.....anything else, because you've got a natural immunity to them from *living with them.*
An interesting finding definately, but not a dangerous one at all.
There is a guy who sits in the same office as me. When he sneezes I can 'taste' it for about a minute after. Don't know if he puts his hand over his mouth or not.
When it happens nowdays I just hold my breath discreetly and walk out of the office for a few minutes.
...there is no sig...
PC World also notes on this subject. Fellowes is announcing that they are going to begin injecting a product called "Microban" into their keyboards and mice, to create an environment where bacteria cannot survive and grow.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Provided you have a room where other entrances are reasonably blocked or dealt with and you keep the air flowing. Heck, at work the clean room is a room with lots of HEPA filters. Basically you have an outer room, with all the doors qith at least one other door before the outside, and good seals. All the air is filtered comming in here, not sure how well. There are also stick pads to get dirt off your shoes.
The inner room, the actual clean room, then just maintains itself through positive air flow. There are a couple layers of filters that take out basically all particles. The bottom of the walls are open so that the air can continually flow out.
Well this works REALLY well (well enough to work on micro processors in there). There's basically no dust in the outer room, never mind the clean room.
So if you want to use it in your home, you'll need to make sure that your doors/windows are reasonably well sealed and stay closed. It'll do you no good if a big entrance for dust is open all the time. You also need to keep the air flowing, since some dust WILL get in and it's only getting out via the airflow. Just having it run with your AC probably won't do a ton. You'll probably need continous airflow.
But ya, they work great if you give them an environment to work in. You won't get cleanroom conditions in your house, of course, but you can pretty effectivly eliminate dust, at least in a single room.
a) scream and run out of the restaurant.
b) pick the bug off and continue eating.
c) calmly point out the problem to the waitperson and ask for another salad.
d) get all in a huff and sue the restaurant, the waiter, and the food vender.
This situation has happened to me twice. The first time, my answer was "b". The second time (years later) my answer was "c" (I think the bug was uglier than the little inch-worm thingy).
I suppose you could offer "e) ignore the worm and eat the salad. The worm can look out for itself." But that's just a little bit too far for me.
There is stuff everywhere. Get over it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In my office we have an ozone generator that comes on after hours for a few hours. Ozone is a good oxidizer therefore o good sanitizer that can be circulated through the air. If the computers are left running at night the bacterias will get pretty well oxidized on a daily basis. Ozone, being an unstable molecule (O3) breakes back down into oxygen (O2) by morning. If you're paranoid about bacteria you might try this. I haven't noticed much difference in health, but it smells nice and fresh in the morning.
This just means that people that have computer jobs will live healthier lives (because of the induced microbe resistance from being constantly exposed) than people who drink from toilet boils.
Seriously, what the hell does this proove? If 1 of those bacterias is deadly in the toilet and the 20,000 ones in my comp aren't, is that important? Probably not, because you'd be too occupied being impressed by numbers. You can make numbers say what you like. Kind of like making gigantic gapped bars for little insignificant things like
49 germs
20,000 germs
Oh my, that bar is long! Must be bad!
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
There's also some evidence that living in an environment that's too sterile can actually be harmful - your immune system needs a workout, and if you don't give it one it can go wrong... causing allergies, asthma, etc.
Very true...
Babies who get fevers are healthier
Exposure to pets reduces allergies and asthma (there's a more recent study from Germany specifically about infant exposure to cats and asthma, but I couldn't find a link)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
You hands, on the... other... (damn)... hand, touch everything from the outside of your car, dirty dishes, doorknobs that everyone else has been handling, touch your mouth, get sneezed into, clean up messes, pick coins up from the ground, and a wide variety of various surfaces that are not clean. Add all the surfaces that are shared (like papers, which are nice fiber bacteria swabs) that swap bacteria back and forth from fellow humans.
Add to that the fact that commercial toilets are generally disinfected once a day. When's the last time you saw a doorknob being disinfected?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I used to service PC's in a hospital, and they were a mess. Systems in the sterile areas, the compromised immunity area especially, you had to bag and remove before you could open them up. Dust carries some dangerous stuff, and in the compromised immunity wing you couldn't even move a ceiling tile or change a light fixture without removing the patent. The first time a nurse saw the inside of a PC from that ward, she remarked "That pretty much could have killed the patient who shared the room with the computer".
At a different hospital I was at for a short time, no such policies for removing systems exist. Scary.
-G "We love to buy books, because we are buying the belief we have time to read them" - Warren Zevon
Exactly. Except it's probably even worse than that.
They don't say where they find the "average" toilet seat, but since they were surveying the bacteria in cubicles, I'll bet you they're checking office toilet seats.
If the offices they checked are anything like the comapany I used to work for, the toilet seats are cleaned with an industrial disinfectant every singly day.
The cubicles are usually cleaned when someone quits and someone else moves into the cubicle, or when departments move- I'd say between 6 months and 3 years between cleanings, on average.
And they expect people to be surprised by this?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Just to nitpick: How much smaller than a proton is an electron?
Answer: we dont know, since the radius of an electron has so far been too small to be measured.
Unless you mean their masses of course - then we are talking a factor of 2000.
I don't doubt that. I built my own clone (high voltage rectified from neon transformers, couple of thousand ionization points, air circulation with a fan, big positive collection plate for dust near the points) and when I crank it low enough that it doesn't produce crazy amounts of ozone, it doesn't collect noticeable amount dust during a day either. It does do something - the air somehow feels a lot fresher after running it. It's funny to watch the microamp-meter showing electricity flowing into thin air, too.
If you look at the industrial electrostatic air cleaners, they use tens of kilovolts to be effective. You can't use that much at home, the ozone production would make you sick.
--
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
actually produces around 1 standard drink of alcohol a day.
Those kinda bacteria wouldn't survive well on a desk anyway. (Anerobic, in an aerobic environment.)
I'm actually very sensitive to anti-bacterial agents. I didn't realize that showering with A.B. Dawn would fuck me up so bad, I just liked it because it cured my acne.
Anyway, now I have to steer completely clear of anything anti-microbial because I killed most of the natural bacteria that keep your body working. Every day I start by eating a serving of plain yogurt, that seems to be working to slowly repair me.
I was 17 and had an ulcer because my body couldn't properly process most foods. It's been four years of chronic pain from overexposure to Anti Bacterial chemicals.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Who sponsored this "research" anyways:
"Viruses are transferred by our hands, especially cold viruses."
She said it is impossible to turn our surroundings into sterile zones, but we can minimise the risk by washing our hands regularly and using alcoholic wipes on office furniture like phones and keyboards.
It sounds like turning our environment into sterile zone is a goal, alas impossible to meet. (We would not be breathing for sure..) I can bet you $5 that you're going to be more sick living in a sterile environment. Your immune system will become so weak, you'll catch anything, airborne or not.
The article also seems to claim that the less bacteria, the better. No mention on types of bacteria whatsoever. This is food for ultra-sensitive people with fear of dirt! They conclude that you need to buy alchoholic wipes to clean the surfaces, not mentioning that such wipes are bad to your skin and will dry it out.
Again, who sponsored this "research" and FUD?
Why should we listen to such drivel?
A desk is capable of supporting 10 million bacteria and the average office contains 20,961 germs per square inch, according to research.
Do the math:
10*10^6 / 20961 = 477 square inches
So if the average desk has more surface area than 477 square inches, it is one of the cleaner places in your office! Can you put four sheets of paper on your desk?
The article disproves proves what it claims to prove. QED.
Raisinettes are my raison d'etre
>Cleanest computers come from elderly,
>upper class people, filthiest computers
>come from poor people who usually have
>lower hygiene standards and more likely
>to SMOKE than the upper class folks.
i work on a lot of computers too and i have noticed smokers in *all* economic brackets.
additionally, i no longer work on the computers of smokers. i can't even take the computer off-site to a smoke-free environment to work on it because it emits irritating smoke particulates due to being run a smoke filled environment. i highly recommend choosing this to all consultants who dislike working on smokey computers.