Here’s the latest workplace health hazard: keyboards. And part of the problem is what mice (the animal kind) are doing on your keyboards at night while you’re not around.
Great Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) says workers who eat lunch at their desks are creating health hazards for themselves.
That’s because the food crumbs that fall into the keyboards lure mice.
At night, the mice scrounge for food and dig into the crumbs in keyboards.
Problem is, the mice have no problem pooping where they eat, so to speak.
The RSC says workers can get sick simply by typing on a pooped-on keyboard and then picking up a sandwich with their unwashed hands. The potential stomach illness has been dubbed “qwerty tummy” after the first six letters on a keyboard.
One London cleaning company told the RSC that a woman couldn’t understand why seeds kept popping out of her keyboard when she typed. An investigation showed them to be mouse droppings.
Scientists found traces of E. coli after swabbing keyboards in their London offices.
One keyboard was so dirty that a microbiologist ordered it removed, quarantined and cleaned.
The RSC really wants to spread the word about keeping desks clean at work. And what better way to do that than with a contest?
The scientists will give £300 (about $439) to the sender of the most awful image of a workplace keyboard.
What’s the worst office keyboard you’ve seen? Let us know in the Comments Box below.
