Mental Health

Mobile Phones More Dirty Than Toilet Seats

By Drishya Nair | Update Date: Sep 01, 2012 09:36 AM EDT

You sure want to see the toilet seat as sparkly clean every time you visit the lavatory. But what if we told you, that your mobile phone, something that you hold in your hands almost all day, and so close to your face, perhaps contains more bacteria than you find in a toilet?

This might sound like a nightmare, but it is true. 

According to experts, they have discovered that there are 10 folds more bacteria on an average mobile phone which can cause nausea and stomach problems, than on a toilet seat.

Phones are often passed from hands to hands among people and are never cleaned, which spreads the germs and lets the diseases keep building.

According to Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, bacteria get onto a phone easily due to the fact that it is so close to our hands and mouths, Mail Online reported.

When mobile phones are shared with friends or strangers, germs easily get into the devices and since it is an electronic device, people seldom clean them, Gerba said.

People do not routinely clean their phones. However, giving them a wipe with an antibacterial substance every now and then must be considered. There have been researchers earlier which have revealed that many things that we assume clean in general might not be so. 

Keyboards of computers and Television remote controls are also devices which fall into the same category.

For the study, researchers swabbed 33 keyboards for food poisoning bugs e.coli, coliforms, staphylococcus aureus and enterobacteria and found that four were a potential health hazard and infectious.

According to British scientists, cash machines have similar levels of pseudomonads and bacillus, bacterias which are known to cause sickness and diarrhea, found by them in public toilets, the Mail Online report said.

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