Keyboards Are Disgusting 526
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.
You think keyboards are disgusting? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's more disgusting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Myth Busters agrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
-Rick
Bacteria Hysteria (Score:4, Interesting)
Years ago.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Germs vs Risk (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a bottle of cleaning fluid that that purports to kill 99.something% of bacteria. Does that make me safer? Probably not; instead I'm helping the natural selection process to breed super-bugs that are resistant to antiseptic.
The specious "germ" argument is exactly the same as the one used to compute risk of intrusion by the number of reported exposures in a software system. What matters is infection/intrusion, not exposure. And it *can* be measured, so why bother to measure the bogus quantities?
Re:A Test to Verify the Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
and in an office (desk, phone, etc). This was a very diggsian story in that it repeats 10-20 year old information as if it were brand new. The mystery isn't that everything else is so dirty, it's that toilet seats are so clean! And would the results be different if they tested the average Slashdotter's toilet that only gets cleaned twice a year?
This is really... (Score:5, Interesting)
Did the article bother listing precisely what bacteria and fungi they found? I wouldn't be surprised if they mostly found bacterial species from the genera of Bacillus and Staphylococcus with a few gram-negative rods thrown in for good measure. Oh, Propionibacterium acnes is probably pretty common as well. With the fungi it's more of a mixed bag, although most would probably fall into the general category of Ascomycetes.
As for catching the flu from your keyboard... Viruses such as Influenza don't survive on dry, non-porous surfaces for very long. Once the viral envelope has dried out, the virus is pretty much inactivated. You stand a better chance of catching the flu from talking to the person in the next cubicle or on the elevator.
Best cleaning practices (Score:2, Interesting)
It works, although the numbers and letters fade after about 3 times. But then again, I'm not a peeker anyway.
Haven't tried it with a mouse yet.
Re:Germs vs Risk (Score:3, Interesting)
Bleach is the ultimate bug killer. It can even kill the virus which causes AIDS (though the side effects to the patient aren't good).
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty good article [blackwell-synergy.com] on the subject. The theory being a clean environment leads to an overactive immune system that can develop into severe allergies.
So what? They're _my_ germs! Dishwasher? (Score:5, Interesting)
Otherwise, I don't worry: These are _my_ germs, mostly things on my hands that I've already built up an immunity to or have no way of avoiding even if my kbd was sterile. I won't let others use my kbd, and I really try to avoid using others kbds. A much bigger problem is money and door handles. Lots of people touch them and I could get some new virus/bacterium.
BTW: toilet set tops are often very clean. But less so the undersides where women want men to put their fingers to raise and lower toilet seats! Default=up might be more sanitary.
a bit of righteous indignation. (Score:3, Interesting)
One call had me responding to a guy whose keyboard was, bar none, the most disgusting I've ever seen. He had left for the day, and I picked up the keyboard because he'd left a USB device plugged into it. Something like a metric ton of dander, hair, and bread/cracker/cookie crumbs fell out of it.
A few weeks later, the building administrator (read: not my boss) sent me a note explaining to me why I needed (read: ordering me) to go to everyone's keyboard, blow out the keys with compressed air, wipe them down, check every key for motility, and wipe down the monitors. After a brief consultation with my boss, I replied that I trusted our employees to be able to handle those maintenance tasks themselves, although I'd be happy to help if there was a specific problem.
All this is by way of saying: some people just don't think about it, and some people just want it to be someone else's problem. But it's your mess, so clean it up, for chrissake.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything has more bacteria than a toilet seat. (Score:2, Interesting)
To peoples horror, the drinking fountain was way more bacterial than was the toilet water. But when you think about it, when was the last time they used toilet cleaner on the water fountain?
Likewise, your desk, your keyboard, your chair, probably even your monitor probably all have far worse bacteria counts than would a toilet seat in any regularly maintained toilet area. Put away the Lysol.
Re:Germs vs Risk (Score:1, Interesting)
You aren't breeding "super-bugs." Your cleaner uses chemical, not biological, agents to kill the bacteria. Think of it like this. If you spray a crowd of people with machine gun fire you may kill 99.something% of the people. No matter how many times you do this you will never create a race of super-humans who are immune to bullets.
Re:Keep it clean will ya (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes but air compressors and Q-tips do nothing against microorganisms like Acinetobacter Baumannii which I actually cultured on a keyboard found in an office at the hospital where I work. Guys... ask your local microbiologist what A.baumannii is... it's VERY BAD SHIT!
Re:Makes sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless you use the palm of your hand to crap, I believe it's the proximity to the bunghole what leads one to believe the buttocks contain more bacteria than your fingers.
A simple case of explosive diarrhea could splatter enough bacteria on your buttocks that could then get passed on to the toilet seat, that's the idea we may (un)consciously have
In any case, I think it's a matter of moral cognitivism. I read about a research proving that there's a moral aspect to taste, one of the experiences being that if someone showed you a turd that look like a turd, eventhough he told you it's made of chocolate, you'd still feel some opposition to the idea of eating it, because your first impression was that it was shit, and you know that shit is not something you should eat. Even if you can corroborate the information, you still feel some moral impediment to eating it.
So yeah, there's a moral impediment attached to the idea of licking the toilet seat, even when we are being shown and research shows that there's more bacteria in a keyboard than in the toilet seat. We don't feel the same way about licking the keyboard.
Bateria on keyboards (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Germs vs Risk (Score:3, Interesting)
I very much doubt that they are using bleach. Most states mandate a licensed sanitizing agent for food uses. Bleach does not fall in that category, although it is a useful sanitizer, because it is slow-acting -- it can take up to 20 minutes to have a full sanitizing effect. A quick dip in bleach is not going to kill everything. More than likely, the ice cream shop is using iodophor.
Other sanitizers like iodophor or dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid (sold as Star San) or even phosphoric acid work much more rapidly -- iodophor in 2 minutes or less, Star San even quicker.
Also, do not confuse "sanitation" with "sterilization." Only extreme heat can truly sterilize. There will always be a few bugs here and there that escaped the treatment.
Re:Keep it clean will ya (Score:1, Interesting)
Assuming you mean the overuse of antibiotics is the one that brings along major implications...
I saw a TV segment a while back that said the active ingredient in anti-bacterial hand soap may become ineffective against bacteria (due to resistance) if it continues to be used as much as it is currently. When you wash your hands, you usually don't need to kill the bacteria; you just want it off your hands--dead or alive--and normal non-anti-bacterial soap will do that. If overuse caused the active ingredient to be ineffective, it would really suck for those times in which you really do need to kill the bacteria on your hands, as in surgical and other sterile situations. (Back to the days where surgeons would just stick their dirty hands into my chest cavity? No thankya...)
So I guess the point to my ramble is that there are major implications of the overuse of both anti-biotics and anti-bacterial soap. I, personally, ain't worried too much about either one; human ingenuity will find a fix if either situation ever arose.
Anyway, I bet my keyboard is a lot dirtier than the ones they sampled... and I'm still fairly healthy. At least physically.