Computer hygiene, keyboards and eating at computers?

[Kata]

Given that the kitchen sponge is so filthy...whats a decent alternative!? No, don't say dishwasher

[Great Eastern]

Probably the best way would be to put the sponge in boiling water before you use it.

You have to ask though whether its worth doing it, how often do you get ill after using plates etc which have been washed up with it?

[Gorloff]

Hello, well from my experience, computer keyboard can experience any thing starting from crumbs, finishing with bear
But eating while watching anything computer or TV can be bad for your digestion.. that is what I heard..

[pauldarkside]

Hello, well from my experience, computer keyboard can experience any thing starting from crumbs, finishing with bear

You can keep your animalistic urges away from my keyboard

[oshta]

Some interesting responses there then, thanks all.

Just a sidenote really - Are we being too clean though nowadays?

Look at programs like how clean is your house etc and you generally see that the people living in squaller don't really have that much wrong with them. Does their immune system start to work in overdrive due to their exposure to higher levels of bacteria?

You never used to see anti-bacterial wipes, sprays and whatever years ago, yet I bet older generations worried about this as much as we do nowadays.

Interesting isnt it.

When i moved to uni a whole host of the things i did shocked a whole host of people. Things that i have never before even considered or thought about. Bending down to wipe up a bit of split source in the kitchen with the disk cloth for instance. I just did it out of instinct and the other person in the room who shared the kitchen with me and 10 others reacted with a sharp intake of breath.
- Its something ive always done at home, its what my mum and my dad do and its what ive always done and my mums a GP.

Draining sump oil out of the kitcar into (my) stainless steel baking tray once has prevented one of this years housemates using it since! And when anyones moaning about the fact the kitchen work tops are unhygienic dirty my response if pushed past 'urrrm, yeah whatever' is to stick my tongue on it and lick it. Before then wiping it down with the dish cloth.

As far as im aware ive not had a day of sick in the last 8 months since being in this house and neathers any of my housemates.

I also eat every evening meal, and some breakfasts an lunches, infront of the very keyboard im typing on now which i have had for just over ten years, infact im actaully mid evening meal now!

Humm, odd.

I emailed the uni library yesterday as well, who allow eating and drinking at their computers. They say they considered offering disinfectant wipes as part of there 'flu plan' when that came out last year but have not felt the need to. They also priced damaged keyboards at £50 per annum which with a further £200 for other damage and theft raises the total cost of damage and theft per computer annum to a whopping £1.78!!


Daniel

[dbh]

Personally I think the ruling your new IT guy has done is respectable because I've seen some of the states of the keyboards in my office and it's bloody disgusting. I had to literally scrub down my keyboard with wet wipes and anti-bacterias when I joined my company as it was that filthy.

If it keeps the equipment in order and clean then you can't really complain to be honest. I do think drinking water etc is harsh but I can understand about eating at the desk. However we have a cafe area so that's a non matter for me.

In fact you should use his very reasoning to keep taking regular breaks away from the machine... they ask you why you're not at the desk well just say you needed to take a break to get some water :-P ... besides who the hell wants to sit in front of the computer at lunch when you use it all day!? I know some do but it's better to go for a walk or something!

[Fraz]

Just a sidenote really - Are we being too clean though nowadays?

Totally - over-cleanliness is really quite stupid and futile in many respects, not to mention being a double-edged sword. Not only is constantly killing off bacterial colonies with anti-bac wipes, etc, slowly breeding more resistant bacteria, it's also mostly futile unless you regularly bleach down everything in your house.

Also, gauging something's cleanliness by seeing how many bacterial colonies are produced after swabbing it is also stupid. I hate to sound like a yoghurt advert, but some bacteria are better than others. For instance, you really don't want raw meat bacteria on your surfaces (salmonella, etc), but IIRC ~70% of bacteria is non-pathogenic - i.e. completely harmless to humans.

Also, what about things like norovirus, etc, that they don't even test for - the main cause of things like upset stomachs and food poisoning. So.... washing your hands after going to the toilet = important, but does the plug hole on my sink really need to be cleaned with bleach every day like that stupid TV show would seem to indicate?

Kids who grow up with a dog/cat in their homes generally tend to have hardier immune systems, with fewer cases of allergies + asthma when they are older. And lets face it - if you've got a dog in your home, cleaning excessively with anti-bac wipes is more futile than ever.

A bit of dirt is good for you if you ask me. A base-line level of cleanliness and hygene is important, but past that point is just fodder for advertising executives.

[TooNice]

To me it doesn't matter if licking something off the floor directly doesn't cause the person doing it, or the people around to be sick (I know no one said they did that), it would still be unnecessarily lacking hygiene in my book.

It's very hard to use as a gauge that it's fine anyway, between the age of 12-20 I can honestly say that I did not get sick *once*. It had reached a point that I honestly believed that I was some kind of anomaly. Until I learnt the hard way that my immune system was not magical.

I used to justify walking around in T-Shirt/skiing in T-Shirt as a 'workout for my immune system', and to some extent I still do (going through many 0C to -12C winters made me more tolerant to low temp at the cost of hot temp), but I do not think that the immune system is something you can 'train' in the same way that you would train in a gym. You can increase your strength gradually by increasing the weight/reps without going too far and injuring yourself. But you can't pick your bugs. And there are probably bugs that are beyond what anyone's immune system without treatments.

[Lucio]

Reading this thread made me curious about how bad my keyboard was, so I popped a few keys out to take a better look (god bless Logitech for making this a painless process) and yeah.... I can believe the stories now

After 18 months of cats and meals at the keyboard made me realise just how bad these things get! Still, it's a lot cleaner now due the application of a small hoover nozzle and cotton buds soaked in isopropyl alcohol...

[Singh400]

We recently had a massive change to the way we work. And as a result we aren't allowed to eat at our desks. However, most of the times the "breakout" area is full of people around lunch. So we have no option to eat at our desks. But yes, I hate it when the desk is covered in cramp (we have a "booking system" of desks, aka hotdesking).