Is Your Office Tech Making You Sick?
  Common desktop items like keyboards and mice may be teeming 
with harmful bacteria.
  Larry Schwartz AlterNet October 24, 2016
  It's the 21st century and office tech is commonplace.  We go to 
our offices and get swiped in with electronic badges, we sit at 
our desks and use mice and track pads to navigate our computers, 
and we place calls on our cell phones.  After handling all these 
tech items, we grab a sandwich and eat lunch at our desks with 
the same hands that have been touching all these office items.  
The question is, when was the last time any of these tech items 
were cleaned? Sure, we may wipe down the desk surface 
occasionally, but how about our computer mouse? CBT Nuggets, an 
IT training company, decided to see what was lurking on our 
office tech, and what they found might make you a little queasy.
  There are four common types of bacteria that tend to make their 
way into our lives, three of which can make us sick: 1) 
Gram-positive cocci, which, among other things, can cause skin 
infections and bacterial pneumonia; 2) gram-positive rods, which 
are almost all harmful to humans and can be antibiotic-resistant; 
3) bacilli, which are found in soil and are a mixed bag of 
harmful and helpful bacteria; and 4) gram-negative rods, which 
are generally harmless to humans.
  A team of experts swabbed common office tech items and analyzed 
the results.  Surprisingly, the dirtiest item of all was the 
electronic badge.  Perhaps because it's not an item one would 
usually think of cleaning, or because it goes through many hands 
or swipe stations, the ID badge had more than a million more CFUs 
(colony-forming units) per square inch (4,620,000) than its 
nearest tech competitor.  To compare, your dog's pet toy has 
about 19,000 CFUs per square inch, making your badge potentially 
243 times more bacteria-laden than Bowser's saliva-covered chew 
bone.  Only about 13 percent of the bacteria found on the badge 
were of the harmless gram-negative rod variety.  The remaining 
bacteria were all potential disease carriers.
  The second dirtiest office desk item tested was the keyboard, 
which came in at 3,543,000 CFUs per square inch, or approximately 
20,000 times dirtier than your toilet seat.  About a third of the 
bacteria on the keyboard were harmless gram-negative rods, 
leaving two-thirds of the germs potentially worrisome.
  Next up, the cell phone.  The phone, which admittedly splits 
its time between office and home, had 1,600,082 CFUs per square 
inch.  That's 31,000 times the bacteria on your typical pen, 
which has about 51 CFUs per square inch.  The breakdown was about 
a third each of the potentially harmful bacteria, with very 
little harmless gram-negative rods present.
  Mouse users came in fourth, at 1,370,068 CFUs per square inch, 
45,000 times dirtier than a toilet handle, which has 30 CFUs per 
square inch.  A little over 40 percent of the mouse bacteria were 
harmless gram-negative rods.  The rest was potentially harmful.
  Finally, track pad users were the safest, with only 810 CFUs 
per square inch, although that is still 162 times as dirty as 
money.  Plus, almost all of the bacteria were of the potentially 
harmful variety.
  The takeaway from this study is clear; an occasional alcohol 
wipe of your office equipment is warranted.  While exposure to 
these germs is not a guarantee you will get sick, there is always 
the risk, especially since the average person touches their face 
as many as 3,000 times a day, including the mouth, nose and eyes, 
prime entryways for disease-causing organisms.  The best defense? 
Wash your hands! The Centers for Disease Control considers hand 
washing a do-it-yourself vaccine to protect you from sickness.


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