Your phone is four times as dirty as a toilet seat
If you tuned into The Ryan Tubridy Show this morning, you may have heard
Ryan mention how bacteria-laden our mobile phones are. As Christmas creeps
closer and many of us snap up phones to put under the tree, there's no time
like the present to think about just how filthy these devices end up.
Stop reading now if you're eating.
The results of the iPhone swabs.
In a study carried out by Insurance2go and released in August, swabs were
taken from an iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy 8 and Google Pixel to measure how
much aerobic bacteria, yeast and mould could be found on them.
As they spend the vast majority of our waking days either nestled under our
hair and against our faces, gripped in our hands and tossed on god knows
what kinds of surfaces, it's not surprising that they pick up a lot of
bacteria.
The highest levels of bacteria were found on the phones' screens, with 100
colony forming units (CFU) per cm2 for the Samsung Galaxy, 40 CFU for the
iPhone, and 12 CFU for the Google Pixel. This is compared to 24 CFU on a
toilet seat and flush.
The back of the phone, the lock button and the home button were also packed
with bacteria. And that's not all: a beauty blender was found to have 24 CFU
per cm2, while a make-up brush had 0.4 CFU, with especially high levels of
mould.
So while you're planning your Christmas makeup looks, maybe give your
brushes and sponges another quick wash with some disinfectant...
As the majority of the bacteria present on these items came from you, they
are unlikely to make you sick. But aside from nit-picking about cleanliness,
there are practical reasons for being mindful about how dirty your devices
are.
Smartphones are a significant cause of acne and skin irritations, according
to Dr Shirin Lakhani, from Elite Aesthetics, who spoke about this at the
time of the survey's release.
One way to avoid such contamination is to regularly wipe your phone down
with an alcohol wipe before use, or using a headset or headphones when
speaking on the phone.
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