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. "

Clean everything

[ChocoboKnight]

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.

Americans are obsessed with microbes

[_LORAX_]

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

This doesn't surprise me...

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

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.

Gee, A study funded by Clorox?

[rcatarella]

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.....

Re:Who said that a toilet seat is diirty

[thetzar]

I believe that this "study" was later found to be a hoax.

Warts

[DodgyGeezer]

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.

Toilet seats are generally pretty clean

[scm]

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...

Immune system

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

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).

Re:This doesn't surprise me...

[unclelib]

Dear God, tell me this was supposed to be a humorous post. Can there really be people this disgusting and uncivilized walking around out there?

Re:I'll lick my space bar if you lick your toilet

[Anonymous Coward]

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!!!

A biochemist reader: home's worst bacteria spot...

[afflatus_com]

...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.

Re:Getting things out of proportion

[LadyLucky]

In fact, these bacteria usually do us good. An example is on our hands, where antibacterial soap is a health hazard. The reason is that the "good bacteria", (ie the non harmful stuff) actually competes for food (mmm, sweat) with the harmful bacteria, making it hard for harmful bacteria to grow in numbers.

The action of antibacterial soap kills all bacteria, leaving an equal playing field. Not so good.