Your Smartphone May Be Making You Sick in a Really Gross Way
by Lexi Petronis, Glamour
I think I told you that I sent my brand-new iPhone for a swim in the washing machine, five hours after I got it? That was a bad day. But maybe I'll just cite this research and say that I was only trying to get the thing clean. Because ohmygoodness are smartphones germy.
If you think about all the places your phone goes--from the treadmill at the gym, your purse, the restaurant table, even the bathroom, straight to your mouth and next to your nose--it makes sense that there are bacteria aplenty that could make you sick. In fact, that little smear of grease you often see on the touchscreen? Where there's grease, there are germs.
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"People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom," says Dr. Cain of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
And here's why. One study tested eight random smartphones from an office. While the phones showed no signs of E. coli or staphylococci bacteria, all of them showed abnormally high numbers of coliforms (a bacteria indicating fecal contamination): between 2,700 and 4,200 units of the bacteria. Considering the limit in drinking water is 1 unit per 100 ml of water, that's pretty high.
The researchers also tested the best way of cleaning the bacteria from the smartphones, using plain water, alcohol, glass cleaner, and electronic cleaning wipes. Alcohol cleaned up almost 100 percent of the bacteria; water, unsurprisingly, cleaned away almost none. The only problem? Alcohol may damage some phones, so it's best to check your phone's operating manual.
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One thing is for sure: you want to get that thing as clean as you can. Even wiping away 99 percent of the germs isn't good enough; "For some of the bacteria, you only need to ingest as few as 10 organisms to get sick," says Dr. Schmidt.
Do you take your smartphone with you everywhere? Do you clean it regularly? Does any of this surprise you in the least?
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