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Fighting the office war on grime
 Dirtier than a public toilet, the personal office space gets less cleaning than most people's homes. QUICKVOTEOTHER NEWSGLOBAL OFFICE
ON CNNI TV
YOUR SAY
(CNN) -- Look at an office desk and you see sushi, sandwiches and salads sharing space with PCs, phones and paper files -- it is a veritable breeding ground for bad bugs. Add to that hot desking or shared workspaces, as well as sick colleagues, and you have a situation that can bring about ill health. "People do not realize that their office space is their personal space. Most office workers do not really start cleaning their desk until they start sticking to it," says Charles Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona in the U.S. He should know. To many he is called "Doctor Germ," and has been tracking disease-causing bacteria in offices as part of several sponsored studies. His team found that even though we may spend many of our waking hours at the office, we definitely do not clean our workspaces like we do our homes. Gerba and his team collected more than 7,000 samples from workplaces across the U.S. and found that at the average desk there are 21,000 bacteria per square inch (3,300 per square centimeter). The elevator button contains as many as 3,500 bacteria per square inch. This compares unfavorably even to the average workplace toilet, which has just 49 bacteria per square inch. This means your office workspace may have 400 times more bacteria than your office toilet. Cleaners sometimes avoid some office cubicles, aware that many workers consider them to be an extension of their personal space, where nothing should be disturbed. Workplaces that have in-house cafeterias or eating facilities lead to people eating in the office and at their desk rather than venturing outside to eat, therefore making matters worse. This is also true for offices in places that have cold winters. "People do not wash their hands and they bring their germs from the outside into work," says Roslyn Stone, chairwoman of the workplace flu prevention team at the U.S. Center for Disease Control. "If they have come to work, often sick, then their hands transmit germs to desks, to the restroom, to the sponge and to the refrigerator handle." Stone believes that employees who come to work sick have become an expensive problem for their companies. According to a Harvard Business review, companies lose $150 billion a year due to poor heath through lost productivity and higher healthcare expenses. "These germs stay alive for 72 hours, which is longer than we thought. That is, three full days," Stone says. "When you use a disinfectant it keeps surfaces relatively germ free for 24 hours, so you need to do it everyday." Gerba suggests that office workers should wash their hands frequently and thoroughly for at least 60 seconds. An alcohol-based gel hand sanitizer should also be used and people should wipe down their desks with disinfectant everyday. CNN's Heidi Collins contributed to this report. 
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