LITTLE ROCK — It’s true what they say: Keyboards are crawling with bacteria.
Researchers who took swabs from office equipment in New York, San Francisco and Tucson, Ariz., found more than 500 types of bacteria, most of which normally live on people’s skin or in nasal, oral and intestinal cavities.
Chairs and phones accumulated the most bacteria, followed by desktops, keyboards and computer mice. In a few cases, hardy microbes commonly found in hot springs and volcanic islands appeared in the mix, perhaps tracked into the office after someone’s vacation to St. Lucia or Yellowstone.
New York and San Francisco’s bacterial diversity was virtually identical, while Tucson’s microbes tended to be heavy on desert-soil bacteria in addition to the human-derived species. San Francisco offices were the least contaminated.
And while the offices of men and women had the same types of species, women’s offices had, on average, 10 percent to 20 percent fewer of them.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 07/29/2012