Desks Worse Than Bathrooms For Office Germs
Posted February 15, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Which has more bacteria – your office bathroom or your own desk?
The answer, according to one researcher, will make the germaphobes amongst us cringe. It’s your desk and by a wide margin.
A University of Arizona professor claims germs on desktops and telephones in the workplace far outnumber anything discovered in the powder room.
Dr. Charles Gerba looked at many of the items found in a common office and came away with some surprising conclusions.
Among them: women are far worse offenders than men when it comes to having the ‘germiest’ workspaces.
“What we found is that women seemed to have more stuff in their offices, from makeup bags to pictures of family and purses on their desks,” Gerba explains. “It added up to big numbers for women, even though their offices typically looked cleaner.”
And the more ‘stuff’, the more potential for those bad bugs to hide in and reproduce. He suggests a woman’s desks harbours seven times more germs than a man’s.
He’s particularly alarmed by the amount of make-up containers many females carry around, which he calls a breeding ground for bacteria.
He also notes that women tend to have more contact with small children, who are notorious germ factories as they build up their immune systems.
And there’s one other ingredient in all this: food.
Gerba discovered women keep 75 percent more snackables in their desk drawers than guys do, leading to a whole menu of problems.
“I was really surprised how much food there was in a woman’s desk,” he admits. “If there’s ever a famine, that’s the first place I’ll look for food.”
The environmental sciences professor examined more than 100 offices in a variety of big U.S. cities, and found the common links.
But men don’t escape from also getting badly bugged.
Gerba’s tests show their wallets aren’t exactly the cleanest things around, either. “It’s in your back pocket where it’s nice and warm,” he outlines. “It’s a great incubator for bacteria.”
In fact, those small leather containers carry four times more bacteria than anything in a woman’s purse.
He also warns guys to watch out for personal digital assistants and electronic gadgets, which can accumulate some wee beasties only a microscope can detect.
Which brings us back to our original question. The doctor maintains your office desk has 400 times more germs than your office toilet.
The research shows the worst offenders are:
1) Your phone
2) Your computer keyboard
3) Your computer mouse
4) Your desktop
5) The back of your desk drawer, which often contains hidden mold. Disturbingly, it’s also where most people tend to stash their food.
So what should you do?
Gerba recommends using a disinfectant wipe once a day on the affected surfaces to cut down on what’s crawling around there.
But the good doctor has a dirty little secret of his own – his research was sponsored by a grant from a bleach company, which makes those wipes.
Now get back to work. Just don’t touch anything.
Sign up for a del.icio.us account here to save your bookmarks for free online.
