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Keyboards Are Disgusting
fredr1k writes "
A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter." Also note that unless you read Swedish, you still have plausible deniability when asked to windex yours.
Quick'n'dirty translation:
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Recent research shows your keyboard is more dirty than a toilet seat
(2006-01-18 09:20) Do you have some dirt between the keys on your keyboard? Spending a few bucks on a new keyboard might be a good idea. The latest issue of Pc för Alla shows that a keyboard can be a major source for contamination.
By Fredrik Agren
A keyboard holds about 33.000 bacteria per square centimeter - 265 times more than a toilet seat.
The computer magazine PC För Alla has examined what exactly is hiding on a keyboard. The task was assigned to Pegasus Lab, which discovered that every square centimeter contained 3.100 fungees.
Not surprisingly, Enter and Space Bar are the most filthy, as they are the keys we use more frequently.
There are many ways to keep your keyboard clean, but those afraid of catching the flu can follow a simple advice from Smittskyddinstitutets Kerstin Mannerquist:
- Wash your hands when you're done with the computer, she says to PC För Alla.
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Anyway, remember the findings of Mythbusters?
In the episode Chinese Invasion Alarm episode, while busting the 5 second rule myth, they discovered that the toilet seat is one of the cleanest spots in your house.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
Maybe bacteria laden keyboards are a blessing in disguise.
A few weeks ago I was at a party listening in on some cocktail talk between some doctors and health researchers. They were commenting about how some water borne bacteria was being (they think successfully ) experimented with to boost human immunity. This bacteria is cleaned out water by public sanitation systems.
A few weeks before that my local news had a piece about a girl with a peanut allergy who died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier in the day.
The after story commentary mentioned how the number of allergies among teens is on the rise and how some ( only some ) experts were looking at the theory that middle class US life is too clean. Antibacterial this and antibacterial that do not allow young immune systems to get stimulated/strengthened.
I'm not an expert and these things are saw are not hard science.
Just introducing a thought, that as with everything else in life you can have too much of a good thing....even cleanliness.
Anyone got any good tips for cleaning a keyboard?
Air compressors are very helpful, but ultimately you have to get into the nooks and crannies with a Q-tip or something and that is a time-consuming chore. Of course on laptop keyboards, it's way to easy to knock keys loose and depending on how the little plastic apparatus disconnects from the key cap, you can have all kinds of fun attaching the thing again.
I got one of those silicone roll-up keyboards a few years ago. I actually liked using it. Ergonomically, it worked well for me in terms of layout and feel of the keys. The downside is that it stopped working after a couple of months. I haven't tried another, but a keyboard you can simply wash with soap and water is a great thing.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Dish washer with the drying cycle turned off.
Put your keyboard in the dish washer. Make sure the drying cycle is turned off (the heat can damage your keyboard). Allow the keyboard to dry completely.
Workes for me.
Sure, keyboards are dirty.
:-)
Now, we don't want to go nuts and spray lysol all over it because you're just giving the more hardy bacteria hiding under the keycaps a chance to take over and make your incessant spraying worthless.
Instead, you should put it in the dishwasher. The heat will kill everything uniformly and it will come out clean and unstickified.
1) Disassemble your keyboard. This means unscrewing the back. Be careful when seperating the front and back halves to not have keys fly all over the place or plastic tabs to snap.
2) Remove any electronics. Usually this sits in the upper right by your Num Lock LEDs and has a cord that runs out of it towards the middle between the halves, or through the bottom half. On every keyboard I've disassembled this board is simply snapped into place and can be easily removed from the front half...
3) Most keyboards either have a rubber membrane with contact switches embedded, a plastic sheet with traces in it, or both, attached by a ribbon cable to the electronics. Definitely emove these.
Set aside the rubber membrane if you have one. This will melt in the dishwasher. Wash this by hand, maybe with a little bleach. Don't attempt to clean the plastic sheet... it's not worth it and it can be easily damaged, destroying your keyboard.
4) If the keys can be easily removed, do so. Place these in the dishwasher in the utencil basket if you have one. Otherwise place all the plastic parts like so many plates in your dishwasher.
5) Perform a full cycle with heated dry with a bit of dish soap. Do not wash your plates in this same load... you'll get food stuck in the crevices of the keyboard.
6) During the dry cycle, check on the keyboard every once in a while to make sure it isn't intolerant of the heat (this can vary from keyboard to keyboard). Some will deform after 5 minutes, others will hold up just fine.
7) Remove the keyboard at your discretion during the dry cycle. Wrap the components in some towels to draw the water out the nooks and crannies. Follow up with a hair dryer on the "cool" setting and/or with an air duster.
8) Reassemble.
9) Test, and enjoy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It took me a minute to catch on as well. He wasn't saying that the your ass is covered _while_ you're using the toilet. He meant that the ass is routinely covered during the day thus does not have much of a chance to pick up bacteria before you use the toilet. Therefore, since your ass (think cheeks, not hole) is relatively bacteria free when it touches the toilet seat, the toilet seat doesn't have much of an opportunity to pick up germs.
I would think much of this would be negated if:
a) people pee and miss
b) the toilet flush mechanism is powerful enough to kick up spray onto the seat.
a) is common everywere, but less so at a home populated by adults, especially if one of them is a wife. b) is common on comercial toilets, but less so at home. I would be willing to bet that public and private toilets have dramatically different bacteria levels, on average.
TW
Except in the unusual case of some urinary tract infections, urine does not contain any bacteria. Urine is a sterile liquid. It is antiseptic. It may not smell good, but you cannot catch anything from it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
According to a recently shown documentary, lack of exposure to relatively benign bacteria and viruses, necessary to train and condition your immune system seems the source of many autoimmune diseases and allergies. Reminds me of an old Granny's adage "every child needs to eat their peck of dirt".
The show then went on to identify a bacteria sourced from clay taken from a lake in Northern Africa, the name is Mycobacterium vaccae, that can be used to retrain / reset your immune system and greatly help with many of these diseases. The list of diseases it helped with included leprosy, tuberculosis, allergies, asthma, and dozens more. Seems this bacteria shares common proteins with many nasty diseases and when the immune system is exposed to this bacteria it gets trained and conditioned, better able to handle the nasty stuff if exposed to it later.
The bacteria is being developed into a vaccine that is somewhere in the final stages of trails and may be available soon.
With the threat of Avian Flu looming near in our future, and no really effective way to treat this flu, I hope this Dirt Vaccine is made available sooner. My understanding of the flu is that most of the damage is done by our immune system when it goes overactive trying to fight the flu virus. M-vaccae looks like the reset button needed to counter this immune system response.
Hope on the horizon, maybe, but will big pharma be able to kill m-vaccae before it gets to us? After all it is a naturally occurring bacteria that they have no patent on.
For more on this Google "Dirt Vaccine" there are plenty of references.
There's always a way to clean your keyboard--the dishwasher.
;)
Take the electronics and screws out and set them aside. The keys, the base, and the rubber pad are dishwasher washable.
Use 1/4 to 1/3 of the amount of liquid/power for a full load, and put it on the shortest cycle you can manage and even then keep accelerating the cycle a bit. You want the keyboard clean but not baked.
Don't put anything ELSE in the dishwasher--you're shortening the cycle so you won't have the power to wash too much. The plastic may be dishwasher safe (seems to be) but you don't want to take any chances with the rubber.
If you have a white or ivory keyboard, note that it may yellow a bit, so don't do this on a keyboard you don't own unless the person fully trusts you.
Note: This doesn't work with IBM Model M keyboards (the clicky clicky clack kind) for obvious reasons, but you could probably take the keycovers off and wash those.
I'm not responsible if you damage your keyboard.
I don't know if I'd put a Model M keyboard in the dishwasher, but most of the 'quiet key' varieties should be fine if you shorten the cycle.
Urine as it leaves the body is sterile in a normal, healthy person, and it's nothing to be afraid of. But urine is a nice growth medium for bacteria. So, urine that has sprayed (dribbled, whatever) onto a surface can foster growth of bacteria that are already on that surface or that fall onto the urine splatter from the air. While you won't catch any nasty infections from, say, a golden shower, you could pick up bacteria that have been growing off of the urine that was dribbled on the toilet a few hours ago.
seriously, when's the last time you got a cold or a stomache virus and you can absolutely tell where it came from? (the case of the kid sneezing in your face doesn't count)
But the point is valid: Our bodies are designed to operate in a virus/bacteria rich environment, and has the ability to fight of most of them.
Article has a lot of good points, but overgeneralizes using antimicrobial in many places that should simply be stated antibacterial. There's a big difference between the overuse of antimicrobial soaps and hand-sanitizers and the overuse of antibiotics, one of which will have minimal impact on resistance, and one which has major implications.
I work in a school systems. Toilets get cleaned regularly, but children with all sort of nasty germs tend to pick their noses, touch their various bits-and-pieces, and then tappity-tap-tap away at the keyboard.
Least to say, my laptop bag contains a portable container of antiseptic, and it's used regularly through the day. I've heard various stories of staph infections and others picked up from handling germy computer equipment. Employees of school districts and hospitals tend to get a decent amount of sick days... even without the keyboards and mice they tend to be high on the germ-scale.
That's a bit of a stretch. Most of us won't find A. Baumannii on our keyboards, it's commonly isolated from the hospital environment. Hospitals are full of nasty stuff that isn't common in the outside world.
I'm not sure, but I think most common are S. Aureus (aka staph) and S. Pneumoniae (aka pneumonia). It's not that you won't find these outside, but the concentration is much higher or the pathogen is much nastier in intensive or acute care settings. In your house you're more likely to find Staph or E. Coli, but they're more benign than their hospital equivalent would be.
As far as badness, pathophys of your baby is roughly the same as other gram-negatives, and it's drug-resistant, like MRSA or some forms of TB. The big guns (new generation fluoroquinolones and similar antibiotics) still work, but it's getting to be a problem.
Doctors and nurses, please wash your hands!
Another point. Alcohol will help your keyboard dry if you get it wet. Since alcohol combines with water, if your keyboard gets water in it (water, NOT juice or another liquid!) you can (while it is UNPLUGGED) pour alcohol into it, swirl it sround to get it in all the little cracks and crevices, then pour the alcohol out. In a couple of minutes, you've got a clean, dry keyboard. Just be sure that ALL the alcohol has evaporated before plugging it in! Using a gentle blow-out with compressed air helps, here.
(Caution: offtopic ahead!) This works with gas tanks, too. If you've got water in your gas tank, pour a quart of isopropyl alcohol into it. It'll burn with the gas, and will combine with the water in the tank, which will burn out along with the alcohol.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
I worked in a casting facility a while ago where in the dirtiest (ferous dust, etc) locations we used those roll up keyboards. They work great in terms of keeping sediment from getting into the mechanisms, but unfortunately do not survive "typical" use for a normal keyboard for long. The contact points in the keys simply fail. Similar to these guys: (thinkgeek) http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/5a7f/ Scott
Well, your hands are still usually the dirtiest part of your body whether you wash them or not, but that doesn't mean that washed hands are not cleaner than unwashed hands.
An infectious disease specialist once pointed out (as far as the spread of bacteria is concerned) that we would be better off greeting each other by french kissing than by shaking hands, but I don't think society is quite ready for such a shift in behavoir, however. For now, the best plan is to 1. Wash your hands a few times a day, and 2. Try to avoid touching your face with your hands as much as possible.
Do that, and you'll probably catch colds and the flu a little less often than those who don't... but your keyboard will still be dirtier than your toilet seat.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Apparently Fellowes has already taken care of this problem (http://www.fellowes.com/Fellowes/site/products/Pr oductDetails.aspx?Id=98914)
Years ago I worked in a shop that bought and resold Mac computers, and it was routine to partially disassemble and clean the keyboards.
After removing the keyboard's circuit/mounting board from the housing, I would run a toothpick or bamboo skewer between the keys to get the dust and hair out, and then use lots of water, cleanser spray and a toothbrush to get the finger grease and crap off the key caps. A vigorous rinsing helped flush the rest of the crap out from between the caps as well as get the cleanser out. Depending on what we were buying in, I could be doing this for a couple dozen keyboards in a week of part-time labor in addition to usual duties. I got pretty efficient at it. And we never had a keyboard returned for problems that could be traced to the cleanup.
Since hardly anybody makes mechanical-switch keyboards any more, the problem is a little different. These days the keycaps for full-size keyboards are mounted on top of large sheets of moulded plastic that pop up and down to close connections on circuit traces. The big advantage of the better-designed ones is that moulded plastic keeps liquids away from the electronics. The disadvantage of all of them is the sheet of moulded plastic traps liquid that gets underneath it. I've seen membrane keyboards that are corroded to death. I doubt water alone will do that, but it can certainly contribute to irregular short-circuits for weeks. The upshot is that a quick wash and rinse can never hurt, but only if you're willing to leave the thing to hang dry for at least a week, which means you'll have to replace it anyway if you need to use the computer.
Laptop keyboards are a special case. I have no idea how they make them these days. I never keep an uncovered glass of drinking fluid on the same table/desk surface I'm using a laptop on because its keyboard can't be treated as a $15 part.
The Apple Extended II keyboards were rock solid, and you can't use those any more without an ADB-USB adaptor. On the other hand, if you're slightly handy with a soldering iron you can buy two of them for three bucks at a yard sale and replace any keyswitch that fails, and have a Mac keyboard that lasts the rest of your life. If I didn't find contoured keyboards easier to use, I'd consider it, because as a long-time touch typist I think the feel of those things is like gold. Old IBM keyboards are also great, unless you're the poor sap sharing the cubicle with a guy who brings his own clicky board to work every day.
Incidentally, there were always pools of Coke/Pepsi, sometimes deep enough for the keys to stick down, but rarely beer. And while we've found plenty of food chunks and tobacco ash, I can only think of one time we got a keyboard holding marijuana seeds and bits of bud. It went down the drain with the other digusting carriers of bacteria.