Special report: More on germs that may make you squirm

Bacteria and germs are everywhere, on every surface you touch — but we wanted to know exactly how many germs there are common surfaces. So we visited Bend’s Horizon Broadcasting, to put their employees’ items to the test, and we had some fun with it.

After a brief interview with Dave Clemens of Horizon Broadcasting, he let us swab his cellphone screen for a bacteria count.

“Supposedly, there is every kind of germ on your cellphone, and a lot of fecal matter,” Clemens said. “And that’s why I’m worried about my hands and everything == and I think most people do. But there is still word that all of these germs are floating around. It’s kind of disgusting, if you stop and think about it.”

But the phone screen wasn’t enough. We also swabbed a coffee mug.

“You come in, you get to work and get your morning coffee, and don’t even worry about it,” said Jess Hanson, the broadcasters’ market manager.

Once we had the swabs, it was time to get them tested.

Umpqua Research is a full-service lab for chemical and microbiological testing of drinking water and environmental samples.

“We can test everything from a cap of a water bottle to the product that goes in it or the assembly line it’s on. So wherever the problem is, that’s where we go,” said the lab’s quality assurance manager, Janine Drgastin.

When the results came back, they were quite surprising: The coffee mug had a count of 250 bacteria per square inch, while the cellphone screen had a count of 51,000.

Drgastin said Umpqua Research is able to produce an estimate of the number of bacteria that colonize in a sample. But they don’t test for specific bacteria, so it’s unclear which is the healthy kind of bacteria and which is the type that could get you sick.

Regardless, she recommends cleaning those items as frequently as possible.

“I would definitely put it on your list to clean, maybe even daily.” Drgastin said. “I mean, where you take it and what you do with it and that, it’s always on you. I think making sure you clean it as well as every other surface you’re regularly touching.”

As for the coffee mug, which tested with significantly lower amounts of bacteria, Drgastin said not washing it still could make you sick.

“Knowing the background of the coffee mug and knowing it wasn’t washed means it could have been rectified by just regular washing, just once a week, if it’s just one person,” she said.

We also tested a shower head and bathroom counter. The bathroom counter had a bacteria count of 70 per square inch, while the shower head had 50. According to Umpqua Community Research, that number is relatively low, but doesn’t mean that bacteria can harm you.

Here’s some tips from the Centers for Disease Control on how to stop the bad kind of germs from spreading at home, work or school: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/stopgerms.htm