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Some unfortunate news for people who don’t like rubbing feces on their face: your smartphone is probably covered in it.
In a recent study conducted for the Wall Street Journal, HML Labs randomly selected smartphones in a Chicago office and tested them for various bacteria to troubling results. While the phones showed no sign of E. coli or staphylococci bacteria, the researchers did discover that every single one of the smartphones examined “showed abnormally high numbers of coliforms, a bacteria indicating fecal contamination.” To put “abnormally high” into perspective, the limit of coliform in drinking water is one unit of bacteria per 100 ml of water. One of the smartphones tested held counts somewhere between 2,700 and 4,200 units.
Now, while Dr. Donald Hendrickson, the president of HML Labs and professor emeritus of medical microbiology at Ball State University, referred to the results as “pretty bad,” the study’s sample makes it statistically impossible to draw an accurate conclusion. Only eight phones were tested, and they all came from the same Chicago office building.
The sample size alone would make the results questionable, but any number of potential factors might contribute to this one office’s profusion of fecal phones. Maybe office culture looks down on hand washing. Maybe they’ve been making their own, ineffective soap. Maybe during lunchbreaks they play “Who Can Rub Their Phone On The Most Bathroom Surfaces.” We can’t know. That’s the point. So until a study tests the smartphones of a larger, more diverse sample, there’s no need to cower from your phone in fear. But until then, Chicago, please, wash your hands. [Readwrite Mobile via The Wall Street Journal]
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I strongly suspect that these recent revelations about faecal (that’s FAECAL, not “fecal”) contamination of smartphones is because everyone uses them for a quick toilet-based browse when sat doing one’s business.
Anything in the general vicinity of bowel voiding will end up with some contamination due to dispersal via aerosol; and then one wipes one’s arse, and immediately picks up the smartphone with a heavily contaminated hand.
Not very sanitary, and everyone does it. Yes, I’m looking at you. Now go and clean your phone.
Goes to put phone back in pocket, fumbles and accidently drops it in toilet bowl
Thanks a lot Anthropolyte!
I live to serve.
“…On the contrary, what the Mythbusters proved is that humans probably shouldn’t worry about ‘poop germs’ from the toilet, because they’re already everywhere anyways…”
The two control brushes kept in a cupboard in a different room were also contaminated – I’m fairly sure the ‘aerosol’ concept was shit too
it could be that some phones are just shit
This wasn’t the Chicago office of coprophiliacs anonymous was it?
Well don’t tell EVERYONE!
I need to find some wet wipes
Sanitizing wipes.
I seem to recall tests showed there to be more faecal bacteria on household chopping boards than in lavatory bowls and Christ knows what your hands pick up during a ride on public transport… I’m not going to lose sleep over this.
Yup I think about that every time I grab one of the poles or straps while riding a bus or the tube.
My feeling with the phone contamination is that as long as its your own bacteria, its not going to have much of an effect on you. I remember a Giz article a while back though talking about ear bacteria and sharing earbuds, and now I cringe anytime someone wants to use my phone.
2 Girls, 1 phone?