Going To Work Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

If you're the type who already dreads trudging to your cubicle on Monday mornings, here's another reason to stay home: Your desk may be a veritable zoo for bacteria.

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In a recent study, a British consumer advocacy group tested a few dozen of its office keyboards for harmful bacteria. Four were deemed health hazards, and one was five times dirtier than a toilet seat in the same office.

And that's just the keyboard - there's also the computer mouse, the telephone, the coffee mug, the work refrigerator and all the other surfaces on which workers lay their hands, breathe, cough and spill crumbs of food.

"I think the office environment has always been a particularly unhygienic environment," said Josette Covington, clinical director of occupational health services at Wilmington, Del.-based Christiana Care Health System.

Care Health In the keyboard study, the British magazine Which? (similar to Consumer Reports) commissioned microbiologist James Francis to test more than 30 office keyboards for a handful of nasty bugs that indicate poor hygiene.

Two keyboards had staphylococcus aureus - associated with skin infections and food poisoning - at "warning levels," and one keyboard was removed from the office because its bacteria levels were 150 times higher than normal.

"That keyboard is increasing the risk of its user becoming ill," Francis told the magazine. "I haven't seen a reading like that in a very long time. It was off the scale."

It's not terribly surprising that keyboards and other office equipment are crawling with bacteria - after all, these one-celled microorganisms are already crawling inside our bodies and on our skin at massive levels.

One study last year found evidence of 182 species of bacteria on skin samples.

In addition to bacteria, workers also have to worry about viruses, the smaller infectious agents that cause, among other things, the common cold.

Such viruses can be spread through coughing or sneezing microscopic droplets into the air, through hand-to-hand contact or through touching the same inanimate object, said Donald Lehman, a professor of medical technology at the University of Delaware.

For that reason, sick workers should stay home, but even that may not be enough to prevent the spread of illness.

"Unfortunately, some of these viruses are sneaky," Lehman said. "People can be contagious before they have the symptoms."

Michele Braughton, a receptionist at the Wilmington accounting firm Cover & Rossiter, sees illnesses passed around all the time in her 30-employee workplace.

"Somebody will come in sick, and the next thing you know somebody else will come in sick," she said.

Braughton was disgusted to hear of the results of the British keyboard study.

She said she regularly sprays her own work keyboard with an air compressor and wipes it down with alcohol pads. She also washes her hands "all the time," even if some of her co-workers don't follow her example.

Care Health In fact, experts say, the simple task of washing one's hands, which most people learn as toddlers, is the most effective way to protect against infection.