If you take your phone to the toilet, you can be busy while you do your company.
But this common habit can make your device a refuge for dangerous microorganisms, warns a scientist.
Dr. Primrose Freestone, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Leicester, says fecal bacteria can easily reach your phone in the bathroom.
This includes E. coli, which can lead to annoying diarrhea and stomach cramps, and Pseudomonas, which cause blood and lungs infections.
Even after you have washed your hands with soap, these insects can travel back to your hands as soon as you touch your phone again.
As a result, telephones must be kept all the way out of the toilet and regularly plagued with alcohol wipes.
“The phone will be infected at some point, so it’s a good idea that your phone periodically disinfects,” she told MailOnline.
“My Nokia gets a disinfectant twice a week.”
It is a common habit, but a scientist reveals why you should never use your phone on the toilet – or even take it in the bathroom at all
When we rinse a toilet, a plume of small liquid drops that contain bacteria and faecal matter is invisible to the naked eye, violently ejected.
According to earlier research at the University of Colorado Boulder, this so -called ‘toilet plume’ can travel 5 feet (1.5 meters) in eight seconds.
That is why everything that is within five feet of the toilet bowl can become polluted, whether it is the floor, the wall or a nearby book.
Research also suggests that this dreaded plume still escapes when we have closed the toilet lid.
As a result, Professor Freestone encourages people to keep their phone far away from the toilet, or even better, completely out of the bathroom.
“Toilets next to toilets, because of the toilet spray trajectory, are pretty polluted,” she told MailOnline.
‘It doesn’t matter where you are going, there will be fecale bacteria on many [bathroom] surfaces.
“So soaps and faucets, toilet and washing surfaces, door handles, bath mats – the list is long.”
E. Coli (photo), a bacterium that is excreted from the body in faeces, can spread over the house and can lead to annoying diarrhea and stomach cramps. For scale, the white line (bottom right) measures one micrometer (one millionth of one meter)
When we rinse a toilet, a plume of small liquid drops that contain bacteria and fecal matter is thrown violently. Earlier scientists used lasers to illustrate this, making the plume visible
Research suggests that the dreaded toilet plume still ends up on surrounding surfaces, even when we have closed the toilet lid
If you hold your phone while you intestine, put it on the floor before you rinse is one of the worst things you can do.
That is because fecale matter is looking for the toilet from the toilet and eventually lies on the floor.
“The floor around the toilet will – if it is not regularly disinfected – will have traces of feces with many intestinal bacteria that stay alive for hours and days,” said Professor Freestone.
“So I wouldn’t put your phone on the floor next to the toilet, because it probably records the feces and bacteria of the waste product.”
Even if you place your phone on another nearby surface, such as the reservoir or the nearby windowsill, this can also risk contamination.
Professor Freestone acknowledges that it can be difficult to be separated from your phone, even for the relatively short time needed to use the toilet.
In extreme cases – such as not wanting to miss a very important phone call – she proposes to keep it all the time in your pocket.
Completely keeping the bathroom out of the bathroom can help prevent bacterial transfer of toilet-to-telephones, the expert notes on (file photo)
Although we may not appreciate it, telephones are high-touch items, in particular the risk of bacterial contamination, just like door buttons, light switches and cranes.
That is why we should wash our hands much more often before or after touching them, while we also disinfect them, she added.
The use of an alcohol cloth of 70 percent or a mild soap and a water mixture are good options, but do not immerse it if it is not watertight, or use hard chemicals such as bleach.
The specialist in home hygiene and food safety has also weighed in the best way to position your toilet paper.
In the ‘Over’ position the next square of the toilet paper is opposite the user, while in the ‘Under’ position the next square of the toilet paper stands opposite the wall.
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