The image above, taken by students at the University of Surrey, shows the hundreds of bacteria that thrive in the crevices of your mobile phone. They put their phones in agar-filled petri dishes and monitored what happened over a period of three days. Fortunately, most of the bacteria you see is harmless, but they did discover some traces of staphylococcus aureus, which can cause skin infections. According to Dr Simon Park, the university’s senior lecturer in molecular biology, mobile phone users should disinfect their devices each week in order to prevent the build up of bacteria. Continue reading for more pictures and information.
Park adds: “From these results, it seems that the mobile phone doesn’t just remember telephone numbers, but also harbours a history of our personal and physical contacts such as other people, soil and other matter. [The experiment] was a way of showing [our students] directly and quite strikingly how contaminated their phones could be. But we weren’t trying to shock them. It is mostly shocking until we explain that this is the reality of the world we live in.”
[Mirror via Distractify]
