Top 5 Germiest Surfaces

July 22, 2019 Leave a Comment

Germs are all around us. If you thought about it too much, you would never want to leave your house. You'd never eat at a public buffet, you'd never sit down at an office desk and you'd never put your hands on the handle of a shopping cart. With all the germs hanging around on so many surfaces, it's no wonder disease and illness can spread so quickly. While you may not worry so much about the germs in your own home (although you should), the germs floating around when you go out in public are scary. Whether at your place of employment, restaurants, malls and grocery stores, or in schools and even hospitals, germs are everywhere. Let's take a look at the top 5 germiest surfaces. You'll be surprised at what they are.


1. Shopping Cart Handles: Some larger stores have been providing wipes for shopping cart handles. That's because shopping cart handles are full of germs and bacteria. People shop when they are sick. People grab shopping handles when they have touched other dirty surfaces throughout the day. Any germs that are on one person's hands can be transferred to the shopping cart handle and in turn transferred to the next person who touches that handle. Now multiply this action by the hundreds of times this occurs in a single day and you start to get a sense of the sheer number and variety of germs that can reside on shopping cart handles. According to University of Arizona microbiologist Charles Gerba, PhD, "70 to 80 percent of grocery carts tested across the country were contaminated with E. coli." That's a pretty frightening number.

2. Cell Phones/Telephones: Telephones and cell phones are both culprits for harboring a great deal of germs. Telephones in work places are particularly dirty, and since the same phone is often used by many people in the office, a variety of germs are transferred from one person to the next. As for cell phones, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states that they are dirtier than public toilets. A lot of people hardly give any thought to using their cell phone everywhere, in any environment, collecting germs throughout the day and transferring them to your cell phone. Your own hand is your worst enemy when it comes to transferring the germs you pick up. Think about how many times you check your phone in a day, then imagine all of the surfaces you've touched without washing your hands. It's easy to see how you can pick up and transfer germs from surface to surface.


3. Ice Machines: According to the Louisiana Department of Health and other health organizations, including the CDC, public ice machines can contain more bacteria than toilet water. Ice machines found in public places like restaurants, hospitals, outside motels, and in the workplace are exposed to germs and bacteria both from the water being used to make the ice and from the constant surface to surface transferring of germs and bacteria by anyone who handles the ice machine. Like many surfaces found in public, germs and bacteria that people who use the ice machine come into contact with find a home on and inside the ice machine.

4. Keyboards and Elevator Buttons: Keyboards at work, elevator buttons, and other surfaces people regularly come into contact with throughout the work day are hotspots for contamination by germs and bacteria. These surfaces are not surfaces we generally should think of when we think of dirty, unhealthy areas as they become a collecting point for germs and bacteria we pick up and transfer throughout the day. This isn't even mentioning the number of people who walk around sick and leave their germs on these surfaces.

5. Public Bathrooms: Of course, while there are many surfaces in public that are as dirty or dirtier than public restrooms, by no means can we disregard public restrooms in this article. Whether we're talking about the toilet seats themselves, the paper towel dispensers, the flush handles, or the taps in the sink, public restrooms are a haven for a range of germs and bacteria that are easily transferred from person to person. While you expect public restrooms to be kept clean, many businesses are severely lacking when it comes to doing a sufficient job.


We've looked at the top 5 germiest surfaces in public settings. These are by no means all there is to the story. In fact, we could make the list longer or easily substitute some of the things on this list with others. We could also expand each of the things on this list by including examples of other surfaces and items that allow germs and bacteria to find a home. Where are the most germs and bacteria? The answer is pretty simple. Anywhere you go frequently is a breeding ground for germs. As we mentioned earlier, if you thought about it too much, you'd likely stay home. We count on public establishments to clean, sanitize, and disinfect properly, but sometimes the methods they use simply aren't enough.

Fighting Germs in Commercial Establishments and Public Places

GenEon has been in the business of helping fight germs and illness for years. We are aware of the importance of keeping the workplace and public access areas clean, disinfected, and sanitized. Consumers make our cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products with a process called on-site generation, which means the products are made by consumers on their premises. This method is not only cost effective (products are made as needed), it also eliminates the need to keep potentially harmful chemical-based commercial cleaning products on site. Our products are free of toxic chemicals. They are made using water, electricity, and natural minerals, which makes them both eco-friendly and safer than traditional cleaning products that contain harmful chemicals.


We also carry advanced delivery systems designed to effectively distribute our eco-friendly cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products evenly over all kinds of surfaces in many environments. Whether you need to clean and disinfect large, open spaces tight, hard to reach places, our Mist delivery system is an effective way to ensure no surface is left untouched by our cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products. This system is perfect for hospitals, schools, malls, office buildings, public restrooms, and any commercial setting where germs and bacteria can be found in large numbers. Our on-site generation technology (like the InstaFlow, for making cleaning and sanitizing products on demand), our sustainable cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products, and our advanced delivery systems combined provide the ideal way to fight germs and bacteria effectively in the most germ-active settings.

Do you want to learn more about how to clean and disinfect using safe cleaning products and toxic-free sanitizers and disinfectants? Call GenEon at 866.217.0205 Let us introduce you to our line of eco-friendly toxic free cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products and our on-site generation technology. We can help you make your dirtiest surfaces clean again.


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