Hey, it's worse than you thought. Many of you have surely already read David Rothman's post on "Library Keyboards and Public Health" -- if not, please go have a look! Time to get paranoid and reactionary about the creepy-crawlers cloying to our keyboards and clinging to our mice. The Krafty Librarian wrote about it too.
The bad news from the article David mentions is: "Potential pathogens cultured from more than 50% of the computers included coagulase-negative staphylococci (100% of keyboards), diphtheroids (80%), Micrococcus species (72%), and Bacillus species (64%). Other pathogens cultured included ORSA (4% of keyboards), OSSA (4%), vancomycin-susceptible Enterococcus species (12%), and nonfermentative gram-negative rods (36%)."
The good news was: "All disinfectants, as well as the sterile water control, were effective at removing or inactivating more than 95% of the test bacteria." So cleaning them works.
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Thanks David!
1 comment:
I am forwarding this to some people at MPOW. My previous MPOW had student workers who would go around and wipe down computers, including the keyboards. Maybe something to think about. Best, and keep on blogging.
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