Keyboards are Havens for Super Bugs 591
Techguy666 writes "Gee, this is a suprise. Researchers have found that keyboards harbor bacteria and super-germs. This is particularly interesting this time because this research noted that there is a lot of computer use in hospitals and they're finding it really difficult to sterilize them."
Plastic cover (Score:5, Informative)
That is NOT what they found! (Score:5, Informative)
Nice work, Gary (Score:5, Informative)
This is the most ridiculous piece of non-news I've seen in a while. This so-called 'researcher', Dr. Gary Noskins, needs to research Google for some sealed keyboards.
These keyboards have been in use for quite a while...durable, washable, and yes, they can be sterilized.
Links here [industrial...sure.co.uk] and here [inducomp.com] just for starters.
Mabye I should mail Dr.Noskin my findings...mabye I can publish a study of my own.
Plastic has this problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Wood is what you need. Dries out the bugs in no time at all.
I've seen wooden keyboards but they are horrendously expensive. Sigh.
The motto is: don't share your keyboard, and when you go to a cybercafe, wash your hands afterwards, and don't pick your nose.
Study... (Score:5, Informative)
According to the study, from researchers at the University of Arizona, phones have up to 25,127 germs per square inch, keyboards 3,295 per square inch and computer mice 1,676 per square inch.
source here [enquirer.com]
Uh huh (Score:3, Informative)
Living in a purely sterile enviroment weaks your immune system. Our bodies require a "tainted" enviroment. While we don't need to be "dirty" all the time, if make sure everything is always clean, don't be surprised when that flu lasts a month.
Or, use a virtual keyboard... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=118539
Heh (Score:2, Informative)
A solution (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a what a quick Froogle search came up with.
Keyboard Condom [hooleon.com]
Re:Nice work, Gary (Score:4, Informative)
not hard to sterilize a keyboard. (Score:5, Informative)
we had "water resistant" keyboards so simply slipping one in a large ziplock and then ploping it in the autoclave would do the trick in 60 minutes.
Some brands did not survive the 250 degrees temperature peak and hold, but others did, and the slow pressure increase with the sudden pressure drop kills ANY bug. I dont care how "super" the pathogen is, an autoclave will kill it.
funny part is that keyboards do not last past 5 runs in the device. something about all that heat does bad things to the plastic. but Cherry keyboards were able to survive at least 3 runs.
and yes, we tested it. No bugs after wiping with a sterile swab and trying to incubate it for 48 hours.
Re:The touchstream is the perfect solution (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and the cursor key gestures. JUST for the cursor key gestures, I'd sacrifice *anything*. Hmm ok that and the programmer's keypad (drop 4 fingers of the left hand, and the right surface keys become "handy" things you'd have to reach and/or shift for, like != , {}_,-> etc)
Ok it IS expensive, but looking at it, it's an investment.
And yeah, the surfaces are near-indestructible & easy to keep clean, the only possible problem is the ribbon cable between the two parts, and thats only if you bend it a lot while travelling etc.
Re:Plastic has this problem... (Score:3, Informative)
nazh, pick your nose all you want. do NOT touch your eyes. you will get a cold or flu faster than anything if you use someone's keyboard and then touch your face near your eyes or even worse rub your eye.
your nose has snot and other defenses, hell the snot is bugs that were trapped and are being carried out. your mouth has other defenses, but your eyes are the weakest point of your body. hand contact there is the number one cause of getting sick.
Re:Or, use a virtual keyboard... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they don't survive that well.
There were a few studies done a while ago, looking at cutting boards (in the kitchen).
Those nice clean-looking plastic cutting boards- grow bacteria super well.
Those wood ones, that you would think be full of trapped food etc. in the grain- bacteria just sort of disappear from them over time, IIRC. Speculation that the bugs got "popped" by the pointy wood fibers or similar effect was made, but I don't think it's been totally determined. These weren't cedar boards or anything that would be toxic.
This finding has repeated well, and I read about it every few years in some of those close-to-turkey-day home-health-type announcements.
HTH.
Warts (Score:5, Informative)
I ended up with about 30 of them. It took more than a year of nasty chemicals and liquid N2 treatment by a dermitologist before my immune system finally kicked and the warts went away. He seemed to think that they were particularly virulent and hardy. I strongly suspect I was infected from keyboards. They have to be the dirtiest nastiest things in an office. I'm glad I work from home these days and only sit down at other people's computers via RDP/VNC/pcAnywhere/WebEx.
Malc
You can wash almost any keyboard in the dishwasher (Score:4, Informative)
Tie the cord up so that it doesn't get caught in any moving parts.
keyboards? who needs keyboards? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes the computers are everywhere but many are very different that what we'd expect. In the ER, patient histories as well as subsequent log entries are taken on a flat panel monitor mounted on a cart that is wheeled right up to the patient's bedsite in each room and curtain. These PCs had on keyboards. They were touch screen. A keyboard pops up for major typing but much of the interface is just answering questions in context. The nurses frequently wipe down the whole monitor and all the flat surfaces of the cart with what look like screen wipes (but probably are a bit more potent).
Re:Nice work, Gary (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to nitpick here, because I'm a homebrewer and thus I deal with sanitation on a regular basis.
A sealed keyboard cannot be sterilized unless you autoclave it. It can be sanitized, which means removing something like 99.999% of microorganisms, but it is not sterile in the sense that there is no remaining life whatsoever. No chemical agent can kill 100% of microorganisms (maybe sulfuric or hydrochloric acid at nearly 100%, but only after a long exposure period, and it would eat away the material you were trying to sterilize). Only heat (and radiation) can truly sterilize.
Now, if these keyboards you speak of can survive autoclaving temperatures, then by all means, go for it (if you have a large enough autoclave).
Many people casually confuse sanitation and sterilization, but they aren't strictly the same thing.
Simple Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Buffers, speed, accuracy (Score:1, Informative)
If you type very quickly, the keyboard can't tell the difference between your keystrokes. It's not sure whether you pressed two keys at the same time or one key in the middle of the two.
What's so frustrating about this is that it will figure it out *on screen.* It will actually send the letter it thinks you pressed when your finger hits the first key, then hitting the second key will cause it to reprocess, send a backspace to erase the letter on screen, and put up the new letter it thinks both presses represent. Infuriating.
If you type less than 60 WPM, it's probably dandy. If you type more like 100 WPM it's completely useless.
It's also rather too narrow. Very uncomfortable for people with broad shoulders.
I'm not sure about this (Score:4, Informative)
</heloise>
Re:Wiped out by a virulent disease from unsanitary (Score:5, Informative)
It should be noted that it's not the water that kills devices, it's the water shorting out contacts that kills it. As long as you don't try to run it while it's on, it should survive. His was actually on when it happened, and turned off immediately, so I guess that part was just luck that it didn't fry anything.
make keyboards from antibacterial plastic (Score:3, Informative)
Anyhow, if they sold keyboards made of that, I suspect that a lot of people would want them, not just hospitals.
Re:Wiped out by a virulent disease from unsanitary (Score:2, Informative)
WTF? Use a keyboard cover (Score:3, Informative)
"The difficulty with keyboards is you can't pour bleach on them," Dr. Allison McGeer, an infection control specialist from Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, tells The Canadian Press. "They don't work so well when you do that.''
The difficulty with corporate thinking is that you need to invent a Star Trek touch panel for $988.45 per keyboard instead of buying a $0.50 cover and just changing them daily or weekly. Bleach works fine on it.
Re:My immune system getting stronger and stronger. (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of the problems with salmonella come from a different source, though. Modern industrial food-handling processes provide a much better environment for spreading bacteria than traditional methods. Your grandparents cut up a raw chicken that they either killed themselves, or bought from somone who had killed it somewhere nearby, not long before. Modern chickens are killed en masse in an assembly line that processes many per day. Despite efforts to control it, bacteria grow in that environment and contaminate the meat.
Similarly, it was pretty common at one time for people to eat raw eggs. One has to be much more careful about that now, since eggs are more likely to contain salmonella due to the way they are handled. The mass production that brings us cheap food does have its drawbacks.
Re:Wiped out by a virulent disease from unsanitary (Score:2, Informative)
There are a few small transistors, some found on video cards, that are very susceptable to being burnt out from exposure to regular tap-water with the computer off. Some components can also still have a small electrical charge stored in them for awhile after a computer is shut off as well.
If you are going to wash computer components down, and yes, all computer components are washed before they leave the factory, it's best to do it with de-ionized purified water.
Re:Wiped out by a virulent disease from unsanitary (Score:3, Informative)
This is not so true. I am a laptop repair technician and have had to service numerous spilled-on laptops.
Normally what seems to leave a laptop in a non-functioning state is the corrision of surface-mount components on the system board.
Also, water can not short out electrical devices. IIRC pure water itself does not conduct electricity. It is the impurities in the water that cause it to.
Microban products "should" to work (Score:3, Informative)
Fellowes Microban [fellowes.com] (Just click on "Accessories with Microban Protection" in Yellow towards the top left of the site).
Apparently products which have been treated with a chemical called "Microban" actually resists viruses and bacteria from contaminating the surfaces. Its been applied to keyboards, mice and mouse pads. Its not a surface treatment, rather, its been embedded into all the plastic so its doesn't wear or scratch off. The rep has said they're very popular in hospitals
I would personally like to see Consumers Reports (or an independent scientific lab) actually try and report on the product. Until then, I'm still skeptical of how well it works.
(And I would really emphasize that I'm skeptical. The tests mentionned by Fellowes on their site were bought and paid for by Fellowes.)
Re:My immune system getting stronger and stronger. (Score:1, Informative)
I was with you until this paragraph. You've got this totally confused and oversimplified:
Re:WTF? Use a keyboard cover (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.infogrip.com/product_view.asp?RecordNu
And the google search
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i
In the work place, these things should be mandatory. And mice should be issued new when you start, especially given the fact that a basic two-button PS/2-style mouse can be had for as little as $10 ea (less when purchased in bulk for sure). That, or let people do like I did and go out and purchase their own Trackball Opticals and bring 'em in.
Re:Not the problem, folks. (Score:3, Informative)
Pouring alcohol on a cut is painful, and doesn't even come close to sterilizing a wound in the brief period of time it stays on the surface. I used to teach medical students, and our microbiologists did a great demonstration where they cleaned surfaces with alcohol. They then cultured all sorts of nasty bugs off those same surfaces... it illustrated the point quite nicely.
For immediate care of wounds, copious water irrigation is probably best, at least initially. In fact, for a wound contaminated with debris, alcohol would be a very poor substitute for copious irrigation and removal of said debris.
In short, run your cut under the faucet. You don't have to use sterile solutions for external irrigation, regular tap water (assuming you live in a developed country) works just fine.
Clean it, and see somebody about repairing it. Remember, the longer a wound stays open, the more bacteria can grow within it... after 6 hours or so, it grows increasingly risky to sew up an extremity wound, because the bacteria have often reached a critical mass, and the wound is essentially infected. Try to sew it, and it will promptly open right back up. You can sometimes cheat and go a bit longer with facial wounds, but that's only because the blood supply to the head/face is so good.
Also, some types of solutions commonly used for "wound care" and sold for such purposes in pharmacies can actually complicate the healing of uncomplicated wounds. Peroxide, for instance, oxidizes tissues, kills white blood cells, inhibits the growth of new blood vessels, and can actually slow healing. If you're packing an open wound that's healing by secondary intention, regular saline solution is often all you need.