Microbial contamination on mobile phones
Orawan Monkongtanakit, Anchalee Singsakda, Penwipa Supaviriyakul, Suree Sookpact · Warasan Theknik Kanphaet · 2013
12.00 Mobile phones have become one of the popular equipments to communicate with people widely. We can use them very conveniently and variously, for instance, voice communication, text messages, videos recording, photos taking, etc. The purpose of this study was to examine the microbial contamination on fifty mobile phones of students at university. The question on cleaning of their phones which have been used for more than three months was also asked. Six kinds of microbial c ontaminations were found in 86% of the phones. The predominated microorganism was Coagulase-negative Staphylococci (CoNS) (80.3%). Other organisms included Bacillus spp. (not Bacillus anthracis ) (12.2%), Acinetobacter spp. (3.0%), Micrococcus spp. (1.5%), Non-fermentative gram-negative bacilli (1.5%) and Candida spp. (not Candida albicans ) (1.5%). Up to three kinds of microorganisms were detected on each contaminated mobile phone. The data also revealed that microbial contaminations were found on 87.2% of the no-cleaning mobile phones and 100% of the dry cloth cleaning while no contamination was observed on the 70% alcohol cleaning. Using a mobile phone without cleansing can increase the chance for contamination more than 1.5 times. This study indicates that using a mobile phone carelessly can turn it into a huge reservoir of microorganisms. Thus methods to reduce or remove microbial contamination on mobile phones should be employed. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE TH MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:ตารางปกต; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Cordia New; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}