According to a University of Arizona professor, the average office toilet seat has 400 times fewer bacteria than the average office workspace. Additionally, the office desks of women have three to four times the amount of bacteria compared with the desks of their male coworkers. Although the workspaces of women routinely looked cleaner than the workspaces of men, the researcher found that women tend to keep products that easily transfer germs (e.g., cosmetics) in their desk drawers. Most of the women also kept food in their desks, which can harbor microorganisms. The work surface with the highest concentration of bacteria was the telephone.
