Men's Desks are the Dirtiest

Phones, doorknobs, and keyboards in the workplace are all covered in bacteria, but the dirtiest places of all are men's desks. Scott Kelly and his team from the University of San Diego tested surfaces in 30 offices each in New York, San Francisco, and Tucson for both the amount and kinds of bacteria.

Of particular interest, the bacteria levels the researchers found depended on the gender of the office occupant. "The surfaces inhabited by men tended to have more bacterial cells and more abundance of cells than those inhabited by women," Kelly said.

The researchers have two suggestions of why this might be. First, this could be just because men are frequently larger than women, so they have more surface area to grow bacteria, and therefore end up shedding more bacteria into their environment.

The second idea is not nearly as flattering. Previous studies have shown that men are just dirtier than women; they don’t wash their hands or brush their teeth nearly as often. This could be the cause of their extra dirty offices (and orifices), the researchers said.

However, most of the bacteria found in the entire experiment was "inert," meaning harmless because they are germs we carry around with us all the time anyway. Still, these results make one want to wash one's hands, doesn't it? Link -via the Presurfer