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Who’s Germier in the Office: Men or Women?

Can’t figure out what to buy your wife, girlfriend, sister or mother this holiday season? A new study says you might want want to buy her disinfectant for the office.

Bacteria levels in women’s offices were nearly three times higher than in men’s offices, according to a new installment of “Germs in the Workplace,”  a study led by Dr. Charles Gerba and researchers at the University of Arizona . This portion of the study, funded by The Clorox Company,  set out to compare who garners more germs at work: men or women.

“What we found is that women seemed to have more ‘stuff’ in their offices, from makeup bags to pictures of family and purses on their desks,” Dr. Gerba says. “It added up to big numbers for women, even though their offices typically looked cleaner.”

Here are the results…

Germiest surfaces (from most to least germy):

1. Telephone

  • Most germy: Women
  • Least germy: Men

2. Keyboard

  • Most germy: Women
  • Least germy: Men

3. Computer mouse

  • Most germy: Women
  • Least germy: Men
  • Computer mice and keyboards had three to four times more germs in women’s offices than in men’s.

4. Desktop

  • Most germy: Men
  • Least germy: Women
  • Even though men’s desks were germier than women’s overall, scientists typically saw seven times more germs in women’s desk drawers than in mens, since women typically use these drawers to stash their snacks.

5. Exclamation point key (!) on keyboard

  • Most germy: Women
  • Least germy: Men

6. Pens

  • Most germy: Women
  • Least germy: Men

Plus, men’s wallets were the most germy item in any office, four times more than women’s purse. “Women frequently place their purses on the floor just about everywhere they go, so we’ve come to think of handbags as walking ‘bag-teria,’” Dr. Gerba says. “But seems men may now have a good excuse to think twice before reaching for their wallets.”

I don’t know about you, but I just wiped my entire desk down with Clorox disinfectant wipes…

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