What is Cleaner: a Phone or a Toilet Seat?

Toilet seats are, on average, more than 50 times cleaner than desktops or phones, both in homes and offices. The average toilet seat has only about 50 harmful bacteria per square inch (about 6.5 square cm), but the average telephone has more than 25,000 per square inch (about 6.5 square cm). In fact, in both the home and the office, the toilet seat ranks the least dirty out of more than 15 common objects, including computer keyboards, elevator buttons and kitchen sinks.

More facts about cleanliness:

• In houses, kitchen sponges rank the dirtiest, followed closely by kitchen sinks. Toilet seats and light switches rank the lowest.


• Shopping carts are considered one of the dirtiest publicly used items that people touch — shopping cart handles regularly test positive for blood and juices from meat, fecal matter, urine and human mucus and saliva.


• Money is also notoriously filthy, with each bill having on average more than 100,000 bacteria.