Some 95 percent of Britons say they wash their hands after using the bathroom.
A new study of 390 hands and mobile phones in Great Britain, across 12 cities, had some disturbing findings.
- 92 percent of phones had bacteria on them
- 82 percent of hands had bacteria on them
Ok, so this isn’t so disturbing. Bacteria are ubiquitous in our world. One can wash their hands and still accrue bacteria. Here’s the disturbing part of the findings:
- 16 percent of phones had E. coli bacteria on them
- 16 percent of hands had E. coli bacteria on them
I’ll give you one guess as to where E. coli bacteria originate, and the process by which they might migrate from that location to your hands, and from your hands to your phone.
Sorry about that visual.
Anyhoo, this means, essentially, that one in six British phones have fecal matter on them.This bacteria is what can cause serious cases of stomach upset in people. So it’s not only gross, it’s potentially dangerous to your health.
And this doesn’t even get into the whole messy issue of using your phone in the bathroom. By some estimates more than half of Americans use the phone in the loo. (Brad Pitt suggests texting, rather than talking while urinating). And up to 1 in 5 Americans have dropped their phone in the toilet.
All of which brings me around to this simple request: Wash your hands. After you use the bathroom. Is that so hard?
And don’t forget to celebrate Global Handwashing Day tomorrow by telling a friend to wash his or her hands.