Keyboards harbor germs. Shared keyboards harbor other people's germs. Shared keyboards in hospitals harbor other people's disgusting, potentially fatal super-bug germs. PCs are just about the only non-disposable, non-washable things that live in hospital wards and operating theaters, and they are never, ever clean. <eyes Powerbook keyboard distrustfully, posts blog-entry with a pencil-eraser, compulsively washes hands for rest of night>
"The difficulty with keyboards is you can't pour bleach on them," Dr. Allison McGeer, an infection control specialist from Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, tells The Canadian Press. "They don't work so well when you do that."
She noted another Toronto-area hospital had to throw out their keyboards when it was battling an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, or VRE.
"We could not get the keyboards clean," McGeer says.
(via /.)
Update: Nym sez, " there are washable keyboards out there, like the "foldable keyboard". They have no places for dirt and germs to hide, and can literally be put in the sink and washed with soap and water without worry. For the past two years, my camp ROAMnet has been using these keyboards at Burning Man with our public terminals. They're sealed so no dust can get in them and when we get home, they're easy to clean. They're not the nicest keyboards for extended use, but they're cheap and good for public situations." (we've blogged this)
Update 2: A reader directs us to "a virtual keyboard that can be projected on any surface." (we've blogged this, too)
Update 3: Mikey sez, "My girlfriend is a medical student and when they use the computers in the pathology department they wear rubber gloves, treating the computer the same as the pieces of human they are cutting up."
