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Deadly bacteria may lurk on some of our commonest household items, including
telephone receivers, kitchen taps and sponges, researchers from the University
of Arizona in Tucson warned this week. Pat Rusin and her colleagues found that
when they contaminated a phone receiver with harmless bacteria, almost 40 per
cent rubbed off a user’s hand, and could easily be transferred from fingers to
the mouth and swallowed. At a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology
in Los Angeles, they said that if hygiene is poor, people could pass on harmful
doses of organisms such as salmonella bacteria or Escherichia coli
O157:H7 by handling phones and taps.