A recent study by Cinch Home Services calculated the amount of bacteria in an average home office to find out how the increase in telecommuting during last year’s COVID-19 restrictions affected the spread of pathogens.
Researchers sampled the surface of standard home office devices such as keyboards, computer mice, and monitors to calculate the amount of bacteria found on different surfaces of the average home office.
According to the study, the computer mouse was the dirtiest home office device, with an average of 4 million colony forming units (CFU) per 10 square centimeters. CFU is the number of microorganisms in the test sample. In other words, a computer mouse has five times as many bacteria as a kitchen sink in which 0.734 million CFU was found per 10 square centimeters.
The headset finished in second place with 2.48125 million CFU per 10 square centimeters. , followed by a computer monitor with 2 million, a keyboard with 1.6875 million bacteria.
“Although not all bacteria detected are harmful, many certainly do. Gram-negative chopsticks were present in many samples, 90-95 percent of which can be harmful to humans.This type of bacteria can be found anywhere and can develop resistance to antibiotics.These types of bacteria include, for example, the pathogen of E. coli and cholera.This is not a cause for panic, but perhaps yes, to wash our hands and clean the equipment more regularly, “the study wrote.”
The report also found that 23 percent of people had not cleaned their keyboards since the start of COVID-19. The t also found that despite the amount of pathogens that may be present, 9 out of 10 people still eat at their desks at least once a day, while 69 percent of teleworkers say the pathogens are potentially found in their work environment.
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