According to a hygiene product maker, almost half of American workers eat breakfast or lunch at their desk. Tork, the Philadelphia-based manufacturer of office cleaning products, found that 47 percent of respondents in a recent poll fessed up to dining at their desk when work made sneaking out for a meal nearly impossible.
That, in itself, isn’t terribly shocking. We can probably all relate with that. It even makes a little bit of sense at this time of year ““ in the peak of cold and flu season, avoiding your hacking and coughing coworkers is an attractive option.
The Tork news doesn’t seem the least bit troubling until you combine that news with another study, this one from the University of Arizona. The university, which first looked at how clean our desks are about a decade ago, recently revisited the topic and found nearly identical results: Work desks tend to have hundreds of times more germs and bacteria than an office toilet seat.
We’ll give you a moment to digest that as you creep away from your desk and go in search of industrial strength bleach or a blowtorch.
If you haven’t run yet, here are the stats. According to the Arizona study, toilet seats in the workplace average around 49 germs per square inch. Desks? About 21,000 per square inch.
Phones were even worse, with more than 25,000 germs in the same square inch.
Desks, phones and computers are prime transfer points for germs and viruses because people touch them so often. Coughing and sneezing adds more pathogens to the surfaces that we come into contact so regularly in the course of a workday, while adding leftover food remnants make them even more of a cesspool, the researchers found.
On top of those frightening thoughts, here’s another: The same study found that 64 percent of us clean our desks less than once a month.
Now, before you go to extremes, channeling a combination of famed germaphobe Howie Mandel and John Travolta’s “The Boy in the Bubble,” experts say you can take relatively easy steps to cut down on the filth and your chances of getting sick from it. Because the phone tends to be the most contaminated item on your desk and is held so close to your mouth when it’s in use, experts suggest tackling it first. Disinfectant wipes are cheap and readily available. Wipe down the handset and keypad once or twice a week, or more if others use the same phone.
Since cleaning your desk can be a more complicated matter, especially if your work covers the majority of it, doctors advise taking more of a defensive approach. Since most contaminants are transmitted by your hands, washing them often during the day heads off pathogens before they can hurt you. If the nearest washroom is a hike from your desk, hand sanitizer is a capable stand-in, office wellness experts advise.
