Study reveals just how dirty your phone could be

A NEW study has revealed just how much bacteria is on your phone — that’s right, the phone you use all day every day — and it’s pretty gross.

CREDIT: University of Surrey Bacteria on mobile phones study

HAVE a think about some of the places your hands have been and the germs you could have picked up. Then think about how many times a day you touch your phone.

A new study has revealed just how much bacteria is on your phone and it’s pretty gross.

A group of students from the University of Surrey dipped their phones into Petri dishes — and watched the growths of bacteria flourish.

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The ‘home’ key showed a high amount of bacteria. Picture: University of Surrey Bacteria on mobile phones study

It’s not just your germs but also other people’s that can be found on your phone. Picture: University of Surrey Bacteria on mobile phones study

But it’s not just your own germs that can be found on your phone. The devices that most of us couldn’t live without anymore also carry bacteria you’ve picked up from other people or the world around us.

Bacteria use all sorts of things as vectors in order to transmit - insects, water, food, coughs and sneezes, or sexual contact.

Many of the phones used in the project showed the biggest and clearest blotch of bacteria growing around where the ‘home’ button is.

Most of the bacteria is harmless ... but disgusting. And some disease-carrying bacteria such as the Staphylococcus aureus has turned up in previous years when the university conducted the experiment.

Dr Simon Park, the lecturer behind the university’s annual study said that phones store a record of our personal contacts — people we touch — as surely as they store our phone contacts.

Looks can be deceiving and your phone could be hiding a whole lot of germs. Picture: Supplied.

Dr Park, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology, said, “As part of a course called Practical and Biomedical Bacteriology, an undergraduate module that I run, I get the students to imprint their mobile phones onto bacteriological growth Petri dishes so that we might determine what they might carry. It’s unusual but very effective way of engaging our students with the often overlooked microbiology of everyday life.”