People in developed countries spend around 90% of their time indoors in homes and buildings. It has been calculated that there are 1,000,000 bacteria per cubic meter in the air we breathe in an office building. But what about chairs, desk tables, telephones, mice, and computer keyboards? How many different microbes are we exposed to on a daily basis through these surfaces? This is the question that American researchers from San Diego State University and the University of Arizona have asked themselves. And after analyzing 450 samples from 90 offices in different metropolitan areas (New York, San Francisco and Tucson, all in the US), they have concluded thatthe most contaminated surfaces are chairs and telephones. Furthermore, DNA analysis shows thatmost of the bacteria present in the offices are the same that we find in the skin, the mouth and the nasal cavity (Streptococcus, Corynebacterium, Lactobacillus, etc.).
To this is added that researchers have verified thatoffices mostly occupied by men are dirtier than those used by women. “The differences between the levels of contamination in the offices of men and women can be explained by hygiene,” the authors conclude, adding that men “wash their hands and teeth less.” In their conclusions, published in the journal PLoS One, the authors also assure that “as men are, on average, more voluminous than women, they have more skin surface exposed to be colonized by bacteria.”
