Don’t Get Down with the Sickness

Posted July 12, 2008 at 01:30 PM by Donnell Peavy

Section: His Health, Physical Health, Lifestyle Health

Ringing phones, tapping away at a keyboard, voices chattering in the background, papers all over the place… These are things that come to mind when I think of my workplace. Typical, fast paced corporate life. What doesn’t usually come to mind is disease. You eat, scratch, sneeze, etc. at your desk and then touch your keyboard, phone, other people… An office is a rest haven for all sorts of bacteria and viruses.

A study done at the University of Arizona showed that an average desktop can contain 21,000 germs per square inch and 25,000 per square inch for the typical phone; the toilet only has 49! The reason for this is that phones, mice, desks and keyboards are items that get touched a lot. Also, desk surfaces get eaten on. The simple fact of the matter is that many people do not clean these surfaces on a regular basis. “Nobody ever cleans a desktop until they start sticking to it, from what we’ve found,” says Dr. Charles Gerba, the man responsible for conducting the study. “A lot of people eat and slop on their desks all the time so it basically turns into a bacteria cafeteria during the day, and that’s one of the reasons you get a lot on your desktops.”

One way to help cut down on this is to wipe the surfaces down daily. Of course, this becomes a chore, and most likely will not be done with such frequency.  Another germ fighter is washing your hands. Every day at work I see people running in and out of the restroom without washing their hands. As stated before, I work in a corporate environment by day, so these same people will turn right around and shake someone’s hand…yuck. In addition to washing the hands, try hand sanitizer. It doesn’t cost that much and you can keep a dispenser right on your desk.

Too sick to work?

Workplace analyst Lori Rosen suggests that companies have a list of guidelines which tell employees whether to stay home or come to work. Quite naturally, coming to work while sick increases spread of germs and results in other people getting sick. A basic guideline of Rosen’s is that employees stay home until they have been symptom free for 24 hours. Seems simple enough – my kids’ daycare has the same policy. That may be why it’s hard for adults to follow that guideline. “…Even though they know when they should keep their kids home from school, they don’t know that about themselves because they think, ‘Well, I’m an adult I can deal with it differently,’ but in fact it probably isn’t,” Rosen said.

Research sources or for more information: [CNN]