This Is The Germiest Place in Your Office

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I hope you washed your hands today if you got coffee from the office break room. A new study found that office kitchens and break rooms, where germ-ridden hands touch things like coffee pots and microwaves, are the germiest places in an office.

And there’s more terrifying news: Germs in an office spread insanely fast. In the study, viruses on an often-touched object like a coffee pot spread to desks—you know, where you camp out for nine hours a day—in as little as two hours.

The good news is, using hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, even just once a day, cuts down on germ spreading significantly. Listen to this:

Half the office workers agreed to use hand sanitizer or wipes formulated using chemicals called quaternary ammonium compounds. “We released the viruses again (and) we found a dramatic decrease,” Gerba said. The viruses spread to 60 percent fewer surfaces and there was a 90 percent drop in the amount of virus on hands or surfaces. “What surprised us was only half the people agreed to use hand sanitizers or disinfectants, yet we had a dramatic decrease,” Gerba said.

Check out the quick segment on the TODAY show below, and read more about the research here. But before you do anything, go wash your hands.

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