Phone Biome

Talk about strange facts, more people own a mobile phone than have access to a working toilet. In the US, about two-thirds of the people you meet own a smartphone. That's why it's not surprising to hear that our phones reflect the microbiome of our skin, the microbes unique to each of us.

There are ten times as many microbial cells than human cells on and in our bodies and the majority have not been identified. However, this study is among the many attempting to do so. You may think your body is the same everywhere, but each area is unique and has a unique set of microbes that survive best there. And if an imbalance occurs throwing off the microbiome, you could get sick.

Some examples include acne, allergies, diabetes, cavities, gastric ulcers, obesity and even cancer. In the new study, scientists learned people touched their phones one hundred fifty times a day. So, they sampled people's forefinger, thumb and the surface of their smartphones and found over seventy four hundred types of bacteria.

The most abundant bacteria on fingers and phones are the Streptococcus species followed by Staphylococci and in men, Corynebacteria. While men and women had different bacterial communities, women had a stronger link with the bacteria on their phones.

So can bacteria on cell phones be a danger? Not that we can see. There's no evidence that smart phones are any more of a risk than other human possessions. But the study does show that in the future, we could track the spread of disease by examining cell phones. It would also tell us about a person's exposure to certain microbes especially after looking at where they had travelled and spent time.