Smartphones are dirtier than toilet seats – Scientist

Scientist have said smartphones seven times dirtier than a toilet seat. This is surely going to come as a surprise to a lot of people.

According to new research, an average mobile phone is seven times dirtier than a toilet seat. We even hold the device close to our face and mouth, sometimes it goes in the mouth.

The results found that phones kept in leather cases are the most unclean – as you might have guessed – but even those in fancy wipe-clean rubber cases and the like were still found to be around six times filthier than your toilet seat.

For the study, a load of mobile phones were taken and given a good swabbing down by Initial Washroom Hygiene – a company that knows a thing or two about this sort of stuff – to see what beastly microbial creatures were resident therein.

They used a special substance on the phones and toilet seats that shows up bacteria lurking on anything when underneath a special light. The toilet seat showed up 220 bright spots.

On top of being downright icky, there are also real problems here. Like, you can get ill from nasty bacteria that you get on your face.

Professor Hugh Pennington, who was a bacteriology expert at the University of Aberdeen, told MailOnline:

Swabbing a smartphone is almost like checking your handkerchief for germs – you are likely to find them because of the close physical contact you have with this device several times a day.

There will be norovirus on phones at this time of year but the bugs on smartphones will probably be people’s own bacteria so the likelihood of passing on disease is low.

However, it might be ill-advised to pass smartphones around between people.