健康生活:手机到底有多脏?

 

打电话时，手机需要与你的耳朵、鼻子和嘴亲密接触，这时手机的温度也恰好是细菌所喜欢的。这两个因素合在一起，其结果足以伤害你的健康。据美庭医生学会(American Academy of Family Physicians)会长、美国科罗拉多州儿童医院(Children's Hospital Colorado)家庭医学科主任杰弗里?凯恩(Jeffrey Cain)称，这一危害往往会被忽视。凯恩博士表示，“一些我们以为很私人化的东西实际上对公众所造成影响比我们想象中要大。”一部手机上的病菌有可能引发流感、传染性结膜炎或者腹泻。

For people who want to keep a clean touch screen, there is a disconnect between what doctors and medical researchers advise and what device makers suggest for phone sanitizing.

那些希望保持自己手机触屏清洁的人会发现，在这一点上，医生和医学研究人员与手机设备制造商所给出的建议并不一致。

While products are marketed specifically for mobile-phone cleaning, they can sometimes damage the phone's screen coating or fail to remove 100% of the germs.

虽然市场上有些商品在广告中自称是专门用来清洁手机的，但这些产品有时候可能会破坏手机屏幕上的涂层，或是无法百分之百地杀除细菌。

Even though computers, keys, pens and landline phones can harbor germs, many people's cellphones have become extra appendages─never far from the pillow, health club treadmill or restaurant table.

尽管电脑、钥匙、笔和固定电话也可能成为细菌的栖息地，但对于许多人来说，手机俨然已经成了身体的一部分：枕边、健身房的跑步机上或是餐桌旁，手机与他们总是寸步不离。

'We're feeding the little creatures,' says Michael Schmidt, a professor and vice chairman of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. 'We've all seen that greasy smear [on the touch screen]. Where there is grease, there are bugs.'

南卡罗来纳州医科(Medical University of South Carolina)微生物学和免疫学系副主任迈克尔·施密特(Michael Schmidt)教授说，“我们是在喂养这些小生物，我们都见过（手机屏幕上的）油污。有油渍的地方，就有那些小虫子。”

A lab tested eight randomly selected phones from a Chicago office for this article. The phones showed no signs of E. coli or staphylococci bacteria. But all phones showed abnormally high numbers of coliforms, a bacteria indicating fecal contamination. Of the eight phones tested by HML Labs of Muncie, Ind., there were between about 2,700 and 4,200 units of coliform bacteria. In drinking water, the limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water.

手机会损害你的健康。位于印地安那州曼西市(Muncie)的实验室HML Labs为本文作者进行了一次测试，八部从芝加哥某办公室里随机抽选出来的手机参与了这次测试。这些手机均未显示出携带有大肠杆菌或是葡萄球菌的迹象。不过所有的手机都显示带有大量大肠菌群，其数量之多已超过正常范畴。带有大肠菌群意味着受到了排泄物污染。在这次测试所检验的八部手机上，大肠菌群的数量约在2,700个到4,200个单位之间。而根据饮用水标准，每100毫升饮用水的大肠菌群数量不能超过一个单位。

'The results are pretty bad,' said Dr. Donald Hendrickson, president of HML Labs and professor emeritus of medical microbiology at Ball State University. He says the results suggest a lack of hand-washing and proper hygiene.

HML Labs总裁、波尔州立(Ball State University)医学微生物学荣誉退休教授唐纳德·亨德里克森(Donald Hendrickson)说，“这个结果相当糟糕。”他指出，这样的结果意味着手洗得不够勤，以及缺少适当的卫生措施。

HML then tested four different cleaning methods, including water, alcohol, Windex Original glass cleaner and Nice 'N Clean electronic cleaning wipes. Alcohol performed best, cleaning nearly 100% of the bacteria. Plain water proved to be the least effective method of the four.

之后，HML对四种不同的清洁方法进行了测试，包括用水擦、用酒精擦、使用Windex Original玻璃清洁剂以及用Nice 'N Clean的电子设备清洁湿巾擦拭。结果显示，酒精的效果最好，几乎消灭了100%的细菌。四种方法中，单用水擦的效果最差。

Emily Evitt, 29, who lives in Culver City, Calif., and works as an intellectual property attorney, says she wipes down her computer keyboard and work phone each morning, but she hasn't found a solution for her iPhone that both cleans well and won't harm the screen.

现年29岁、家住加州卡尔弗城(Culver City)的知识产权律师艾米莉·埃维特(Emily Evitt)表示，她每天早上都会擦拭一遍自己的电脑键盘和办公电话，不过她还没有找到合适的方法来清洁她的iPhone手机，能够在不伤害屏幕的前提下，让手机变干净。

'I see people at the gym with their iPhones and think, 'Ugh,' ' says Ms. Evitt, who avoids taking her phone to the gym but brings it with her to work lunches. Ms. Evitt's husband, Mark, who founded a website called The Manly Housekeeper, wipes down the couples' phones with alcohol on the back cover and with water on the front.

埃维特说，“我看到人们在健身房还随身带着自己的iPhone，我就想‘天呐’。”埃维特不会把手机带进健身房，但在吃工作午餐时，手机却是随身携带的。埃维特的丈夫马克(Mark)会用酒精擦拭俩人手机的背面，用水清洁手机的正面。马克创建了一个名为“男管家”(The Manly Housekeeper)的网站。

'People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom,' says Dr. Cain of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

美庭医生学会的凯恩博士说，“手机让人们患病的概率不亚于洗手间的门把手。”

'These are the unintended consequences of new technology that we haven't seen before so we don't know all the risks yet,' he says.

他说，“这是新科技所带来的人们意想之外的后果，这种情况我们以前并未碰到过，因此对其全部风险，我们尚不十分了解。”

Phone companies caution against using most household cleaners─which can leave phone owners like Ms. Evitt in a bind.

手机设备制造商们提醒人们不要使用多数的家用清洁剂，这让像埃维特这样的机主对于手机清洁问题束手无措。

'It's really problematic because a lot of manufacturers don't tell you what coating is on the phone,' says Dr. Schmidt. 'It's hard to tell if an alcohol wipe will strip the oil-repellant coating and damage the phone screen.' Screenmaker Gorilla Glass, a provider to more than a dozen smartphone brands, says one of its screens has an easy-to-clean coating that will 'survive repeated wiping.'

施密特博士说，“这的确是个问题，因为许多制造商并不告诉你手机上的涂层用的是什么材料。我们很难判断，用酒精擦拭是否会破坏防油涂层，并损害手机屏幕。”为十几家智能手机品牌生产手机屏幕的Gorilla Glass表示，他们生产的手机屏幕中，有一款所使用的涂层便于清洁，能够“经得住反复擦拭”。

An Apple spokeswoman directed a reporter to the customer manual, which explicitly forbids the use of 'window cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia or abrasives.' BlackBerry's advice is similar. Its manual states: 'Do not use liquid, aerosol cleaners, or solvents on or near your BlackBerry device.' A spokesman for Google Inc.'s GOOG -0.46% Android says the various manufacturers for its phone platform don't carry an official policy on cleaning methods. Company representatives for the Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones all said that they don't have particular brands to recommend for cleaning.

当记者问到苹果公司(Apple)时，该公司一位女发言人要记者参考用户手册，而用户手册中明确写着“请勿使用窗户清洁剂、家用清洁剂、喷雾剂、溶剂、酒精、氨水或腐蚀性溶剂来清洁iPhone。”黑莓(BlackBerry)手机的建议也是类似。黑莓的用户手册上写道：在黑莓设备本身及设备附近，请勿使用液体或气体清洁剂及溶剂。谷歌公