We
take them everywhere, which one reason mobile phones get so ... germy.
People set them on public bathroom sinks, on mats at the gym and drop
them on floors and hand them to friends to show off photos. Caroline
Porter has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.
When you combine a cellphone's proximity to
your
ears, nose and mouth with its bacteria-loving warmth, the result
can be harmful to your health. This hazard, says Jeffrey Cain, the
president of the American Academy of Family Physicians and chief of
family medicine at Children's Hospital Colorado, often goes unnoticed.
"Some things we think are personal are actually more public than we
imagine." Bacteria from a phone can cause flu, pinkeye or diarrhea, says
Dr. Cain.
For people who want to keep a clean touch screen, there is a
disconnect between what doctors and medical researchers advise and what
device makers suggest for phone sanitizing.
While products are marketed specifically for mobile-phone cleaning,
they can sometimes damage the phone's screen coating or fail to remove
100% of the germs.
Even though computers, keys, pens and
landline phones can harbor germs, many people's cellphones have become
extra appendages—never far from the pillow, health club treadmill or
restaurant table.
"We're feeding the little creatures," says Michael Schmidt, a
professor and vice chairman of microbiology and immunology at the
Medical University of South Carolina. "We've all seen that greasy smear
[on the touch screen]. Where there is grease, there are bugs."
Early adopters like to show off and share
their glossy new iPads, but one thing is rubbing people the wrong way:
The 9.7" touchscreen is smudge-prone -- and no one likes a greasy
gadget. WSJ's Nick Burns reports.
A lab tested eight randomly selected phones
from a Chicago office for this article. The phones showed no signs of E.
coli or staphylococci bacteria. But all phones showed abnormally high
numbers of coliforms, a bacteria indicating fecal contamination. Of the
eight phones tested by HML Labs of Muncie, Ind., there were between
about 2,700 and 4,200 units of coliform bacteria. In drinking water, the
limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water.
"The results are pretty bad," said Dr.
Donald Hendrickson, president of HML Labs and professor emeritus of
medical microbiology at Ball State University. He says the results
suggest a lack of hand-washing and proper hygiene.
HML then tested four different cleaning methods, including water,
alcohol, Windex Original glass cleaner and Nice 'N Clean electronic
cleaning wipes. Alcohol performed best, cleaning nearly 100% of the
bacteria. Plain water proved to be the least effective method of the
four.
Emily Evitt, 29, who lives in Culver City, Calif., and works as an
intellectual property attorney, says she wipes down her computer
keyboard and work phone each morning, but she hasn't found a solution
for her iPhone that both cleans well and won't harm the screen.
"I see people at the gym with their iPhones and think, 'Ugh,' " says
Ms. Evitt, who avoids taking her phone to the gym but brings it with her
to work lunches. Ms. Evitt's husband, Mark, who founded a website
called The Manly Housekeeper, wipes down the couples' phones with
alcohol on the back cover and with water on the front.
"People are just as likely to get sick from their
phones as from handles of the bathroom," says Dr. Cain of the American
Academy of Family Physicians.
"These are the unintended consequences of new technology that we
haven't seen before so we don't know all the risks yet," he says.
Phone companies caution against using most household cleaners—which can leave phone owners like Ms. Evitt in a bind.
"It's really problematic because a lot of manufacturers don't tell
you what coating is on the phone," says Dr. Schmidt. "It's hard to tell
if an alcohol wipe will strip the oil-repellant coating and damage the
phone screen." Screenmaker Gorilla Glass, a provider to more than a
dozen smartphone brands, says one of its screens has an easy-to-clean
coating that will "survive repeated wiping."
An Apple spokeswoman directed a reporter to
the customer manual, which explicitly forbids the use of "window
cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia
or abrasives." BlackBerry's advice is similar. Its manual states: "Do
not use liquid, aerosol cleaners, or solvents on or near your BlackBerry
device." A spokesman for Google Inc.'s
Android says the various manufacturers for its phone platform don't
carry an official policy on cleaning methods. Company representatives
for the Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones all said that they
don't have particular brands to recommend for cleaning.
Boh
Ruffin, a senior applications engineer at Corning Gorilla Glass, says
standard off-the-shelf cleaning products, such as alcohol wipes, won't
degrade the performance of the glass, though he wouldn't speak to
smartphones' performance directly.
"The only thing that's going to affect the glass is some type of
hydrochloric acid," says Mr. Ruffin. "Microfiber cloths work great to
remove oil and dirt."
Such phone-cleaning cloths usually boast about a 99% success rate,
which Dr. Schmidt says isn't good enough. "For some of the bacteria, you
only need to ingest as few as 10 organisms to get sick."
WSJ's Ian Sherr gets a look at the new iPad
Mini in the demo room at the California Theater in San Jose, site of
today's Apple Event. Via #WorldStream.
There is scant research on cellphone germs
and their effect on the body, according to Dr. Cain. One 2011 study
sampled the cellphones of 100 college students and discovered them to be
"veritable reservoirs of pathogens" that can make you sick. The study
authors, from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, noted the high
concentration and diversity of bacteria on the phones. A study published
in the Journal of Applied Microbiology the same year warned that some
20 to 30% of viruses can be readily transferred from a fingertip to a
glass surface, like that on a touch screen.
Standing outside the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, Marci
Hollandsworth, a mother of four and self-described Purell hand sanitizer
devotee from the suburbs of Chicago, says her family passed around a
series of infections all summer, including several colds and pinkeye.
She believes the culprit was the family's four cellphones. "It's
really disgusting," she says. "We are big Windex people for our iPhones
and iPads. Anything that will sanitize our gadgets but not smell like a
janitor's closet, we use."
A spokeswoman for S.C. Johnson, which makes Windex, notes that its
glass cleaner isn't recommended for electronics, though they do offer a
line of cleaners intended specifically for electronic devices.
Derek Meister, a tech support agent from retailer Best Buy's Geek
Squad, suggests a UV disinfectant wand as the best cleaning solution
because its light rays kill germs without touching the phone. Creators
of a new product called PhoneSoap say it uses UV-C light to clean the
phone while charging it, and that the device will begin shipping to
consumers in January 2013.
New industry solutions may also be in the works. A start-up in
Aurora, Colo. is using microscopic patterns that mimic shark skin—known
for its unique design that is more resistant to bacteria than other
animals' skin. The company, Sharklet Technologies, is working on
products for medical devices, furniture and countertops, but aims to
release phone products by the second half of 2013.
Source : online.wjs.com
Source : online.wjs.com
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