When you combine a cellphone's proximity to your ears, nose and mouth with its bacteria-loving warmth, the result can be harmful to your health. This hazard, says Jeffrey Cain, the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians and chief of family medicine at Children's Hospital Colorado, often goes unnoticed. 'Some things we think are personal are actually more public than we imagine.' Viruses from a phone can cause flu, pinkeye or diarrhea, says Dr. Cain.
打电话时，手机需要与你的耳朵、鼻子和嘴亲密接触，这时手机的温度也恰好是细菌所喜欢的。这两个因素合在一起，其结果足以伤害你的健康。据美国家庭医生学会(American Academy of Family Physicians)会长、美国科罗拉多州儿童医院(Children's Hospital Colorado)家庭医学科主任杰弗里?凯恩(Jeffrey Cain)称，这一危害往往会被忽视。凯恩博士表示，“一些我们以为很私人化的东西实际上对公众所造成影响比我们想象中要大。”一部手机上的病菌有可能引发流感、传染性结膜炎或者腹泻。
For people who want to keep a clean touch screen, there is a disconnect between what doctors and medical researchers advise and what device makers suggest for phone sanitizing.
那些希望保持自己手机触屏清洁的人会发现，在这一点上，医生和医学研究人员与手机设备制造商所给出的建议并不一致。
While products are marketed specifically for mobile-phone cleaning, they can sometimes damage the phone's screen coating or fail to remove 100% of the germs.
虽然市场上有些商品在广告中自称是专门用来清洁手机的，但这些产品有时候可能会破坏手机屏幕上的涂层，或是无法百分之百地杀除细菌。
Even though computers, keys, pens and landline phones can harbor germs, many people's cellphones have become extra appendages─never far from the pillow, health club treadmill or restaurant table.
尽管电脑、钥匙、笔和固定电话也可能成为细菌的栖息地，但对于许多人来说，手机俨然已经成了身体的一部分：枕边、健身房的跑步机上或是餐桌旁，手机与他们总是寸步不离。
'We're feeding the little creatures,' says Michael Schmidt, a professor and vice chairman of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. 'We've all seen that greasy smear [on the touch screen]. Where there is grease, there are bugs.'
南卡罗来纳州医科大学(Medical University of South Carolina)微生物学和免疫学系副主任迈克尔·施密特(Michael Schmidt)教授说，“我们是在喂养这些小生物，我们都见过（手机屏幕上的）油污。有油渍的地方，就有那些小虫子。”
A lab tested eight randomly selected phones from a Chicago office for this article. The phones showed no signs of E. coli or staphylococci bacteria. But all phones showed abnormally high numbers of coliforms, a bacteria indicating fecal contamination. Of the eight phones tested by HML Labs of Muncie, Ind., there were between about 2,700 and 4,200 units of coliform bacteria. In drinking water, the limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water.
手机会损害你的健康。位于印地安那州曼西市(Muncie)的实验室HML Labs为本文作者进行了一次测试，八部从芝加哥某办公室里随机抽选出来的手机参与了这次测试。这些手机均未显示出携带有大肠杆菌或是葡萄球菌的迹象。不过所有的手机都显示带有大量大肠菌群，其数量之多已超过正常范畴。带有大肠菌群意味着受到了排泄物污染。在这次测试所检验的八部手机上，大肠菌群的数量约在2,700个到4,200个单位之间。而根据饮用水标准，每100毫升饮用水的大肠菌群数量不能超过一个单位。
'The results are pretty bad,' said Dr. Donald Hendrickson, president of HML Labs and professor emeritus of medical microbiology at Ball State University. He says the results suggest a lack of hand-washing and proper hygiene.
HML Labs总裁、波尔州立大学(Ball State University)医学微生物学荣誉退休教授唐纳德·亨德里克森(Donald Hendrickson)说，“这个结果相当糟糕。”他指出，这样的结果意味着手洗得不够勤，以及缺少适当的卫生措施。
HML then tested four different cleaning methods, including water, alcohol, Windex Original glass cleaner and Nice 'N Clean electronic cleaning wipes. Alcohol performed best, cleaning nearly 100% of the bacteria. Plain water proved to be the least effective method of the four.
之后，HML对四种不同的清洁方法进行了测试，包括用水擦、用酒精擦、使用Windex Original玻璃清洁剂以及用Nice 'N Clean的电子设备清洁湿巾擦拭。结果显示，酒精的效果最好，几乎消灭了100%的细菌。四种方法中，单用水擦的效果最差。
Emily Evitt, 29, who lives in Culver City, Calif., and works as an intellectual property attorney, says she wipes down her computer keyboard and work phone each morning, but she hasn't found a solution for her iPhone that both cleans well and won't harm the screen.
现年29岁、家住加州卡尔弗城(Culver City)的知识产权律师艾米莉·埃维特(Emily Evitt)表示，她每天早上都会擦拭一遍自己的电脑键盘和办公电话，不过她还没有找到合适的方法来清洁她的iPhone手机，能够在不伤害屏幕的前提下，让手机变干净。
'I see people at the gym with their iPhones and think, 'Ugh,' ' says Ms. Evitt, who avoids taking her phone to the gym but brings it with her to work lunches. Ms. Evitt's husband, Mark, who founded a website called The Manly Housekeeper, wipes down the couples' phones with alcohol on the back cover and with water on the front.
埃维特说，“我看到人们在健身房还随身带着自己的iPhone，我就想‘天呐’。”埃维特不会把手机带进健身房，但在吃工作午餐时，手机却是随身携带的。埃维特的丈夫马克(Mark)会用酒精擦拭俩人手机的背面，用水清洁手机的正面。马克创建了一个名为“男管家”(The Manly Housekeeper)的网站。
'People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom,' says Dr. Cain of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
美国家庭医生学会的凯恩博士说，“手机让人们患病的概率不亚于洗手间的门把手。”
'These are the unintended consequences of new technology that we haven't seen before so we don't know all the risks yet,' he says.
他说，“这是新科技所带来的人们意想之外的后果，这种情况我们以前并未碰到过，因此对其全部风险，我们尚不十分了解。”
Phone companies caution against using most household cleaners─which can leave phone owners like Ms. Evitt in a bind.
手机设备制造商们提醒人们不要使用多数的家用清洁剂，这让像埃维特这样的机主对于手机清洁问题束手无措。
'It's really problematic because a lot of manufacturers don't tell you what coating is on the phone,' says Dr. Schmidt. 'It's hard to tell if an alcohol wipe will strip the oil-repellant coating and damage the phone screen.' Screenmaker Gorilla Glass, a provider to more than a dozen smartphone brands, says one of its screens has an easy-to-clean coating that will 'survive repeated wiping.'
施密特博士说，“这的确是个问题，因为许多制造商并不告诉你手机上的涂层用的是什么材料。我们很难判断，用酒精擦拭是否会破坏防油涂层，并损害手机屏幕。”为十几家智能手机品牌生产手机屏幕的Gorilla Glass表示，他们生产的手机屏幕中，有一款所使用的涂层便于清洁，能够“经得住反复擦拭”。
An Apple spokeswoman directed a reporter to the customer manual, which explicitly forbids the use of 'window cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia or abrasives.' BlackBerry's advice is similar. Its manual states: 'Do not use liquid, aerosol cleaners, or solvents on or near your BlackBerry device.' A spokesman for Google Inc.'s GOOG -0.46% Android says the various manufacturers for its phone platform don't carry an official policy on cleaning methods. Company representatives for the Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones all said that they don't have particular brands to recommend for cleaning.
当记者问到苹果公司(Apple)时，该公司一位女发言人要记者参考用户手册，而用户手册中明确写着“请勿使用窗户清洁剂、家用清洁剂、喷雾剂、溶剂、酒精、氨水或腐蚀性溶剂来清洁iPhone。”黑莓(BlackBerry)手机的建议也是类似。黑莓的用户手册上写道：在黑莓设备本身及设备附近，请勿使用液体或气体清洁剂及溶剂。谷歌公司(Google)旗下安卓(Android)品牌的一位发言人表示，在如何清洁手机方面，使用其安卓平台的各家手机制造商并没有一个官方的政策。安卓手机、黑莓手机和iPhone这三类智能手机企业的发言人都表示，他们没有哪个牌子的清洁产品可以推荐。
Boh Ruffin, a senior applications engineer at Corning Gorilla Glass, says standard off-the-shelf cleaning products, such as alcohol wipes, won't degrade the performance of the glass, though he wouldn't speak to smartphones' performance directly.
康宁公司(Corning)旗下Gorilla Glass的高级应用工程师博·拉芬(Boh Ruffin)表示，标准的现成清洁产品，比如说酒精湿巾，不会降低该公司所生产这种玻璃的性能，不过他不愿意直接就其将如何影响智能手机性能做出评判。
'The only thing that's going to affect the glass is some type of hydrochloric acid,' says Mr. Ruffin. 'Microfiber cloths work great to remove oil and dirt.'
拉芬表示,“唯一会对这种玻璃造成影响的是某些种类的盐酸。超细纤维的布能够很好地清除上面的油渍和灰尘。”
Such phone-cleaning cloths usually boast about a 99% success rate, which Dr. Schmidt says isn't good enough. 'For some of the bacteria, you only need to ingest as few as 10 organisms to get sick.'
这类手机清洁布通常自称能够99%的清除污物，但施密特博士表示，这还不够。“有一些细菌，只要有区区10个进入人体内，就足以致病。”
There is scant research on cellphone germs and their effect on the body, according to Dr. Cain. One 2011 study sampled the cellphones of 100 college students and discovered them to be 'veritable reservoirs of pathogens' that can make you sick. The study authors, from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, noted the high concentration and diversity of bacteria on the phones. A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology the same year warned that some 20 to 30% of viruses can be readily transferred from a fingertip to a glass surface, like that on a touch screen.
据凯恩博士称，目前有关手机上的病菌以及这些病菌对人体影响方面的研究还很欠缺。在2011年进行的一项研究中，100名大学生的手机接受了检测，结果发现，这些手机是“不折不扣的病原体仓库，”足以让人生病。此项研究由加纳海岸角大学(University of Cape Coast)的研究人员实施，他们在研究报告中指出，手机上的细菌密度很高，所带病菌种类也很丰富。同一年发表在《应用微生物学期刊》(Journal of Applied Microbiology)上的一项研究报告警告称，大约20%到30%的病菌能够轻易地从指尖传到玻璃表面，比如手机触屏之上。
Standing outside the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, Marci Hollandsworth, a mother of four and self-described Purell hand sanitizer devotee from the suburbs of Chicago, says her family passed around a series of infections all summer, including several colds and pinkeye.
在芝加哥密歇根大街(Michigan Avenue)苹果店的外头，四个孩子的母亲、来自芝加哥城郊的玛莎·霍兰斯沃斯(Marci Hollandsworth)说，整个夏天，她们一家人接连几次因交叉传染而生病，包括患了几次感冒和结膜炎。霍兰斯沃斯说自己是Purell洗手液的忠实用户。
She believes the culprit was the family's four cellphones. 'It's really disgusting,' she says. 'We are big Windex people for our iPhones and iPads. Anything that will sanitize our gadgets but not smell like a janitor's closet, we use.'
她认为罪魁祸首是他们家里的四部手机。她说，“真是可怕。我们经常在我们的iPhone和iPad上使用Windex品牌的清洁产品。任何清洁剂，只要能够帮这些设备消毒，而且不会闻起来好像清洁工的橱柜，我们都会用。”
A spokeswoman for S.C. Johnson, which makes Windex, notes that its glass cleaner isn't recommended for electronics, though they do offer a line of cleaners intended specifically for electronic devices.
Windex产品制造商S.C. Johnson的一位女发言人指出，不建议消费者将该公司的玻璃清洁产品用于电子设备，不过他们确实生产了一个产品系列，可以专门用于电子设备。
Derek Meister, a tech support agent from retailer Best Buy's Geek Squad, suggests a UV disinfectant wand as the best cleaning solution because its light rays kill germs without touching the phone. Creators of a new product called PhoneSoap say it uses UV-C light to clean the phone while charging it, and that the device will begin shipping to consumers in January 2013.
零售商百思买(Best Buy)的极客服务平台(Geek Squad)的技术支持人员德里克·迈斯特(Derek Meister)推荐使用一种紫外线消毒棒，他认为这是最佳的清洁方案，因为这种消毒棒所发射出来的射线可以在不接触手机的情况下杀死细菌。一种名为PhoneSoap的新产品的发明者表示，这种设备可以在手机充电时，使用C波紫外线来对其进行清洁，此设备将于2013年1月开始投入市场。
New industry solutions may also be in the works. A start-up in Aurora, Colo. is using microscopic patterns that mimic shark skin─known for its unique design that is more resistant to bacteria than other animals' skin. The company, Sharklet Technologies, is working on products for medical devices, furniture and countertops, but aims to release phone products by the second half of 2013.
新的行业解决方案或许也在酝酿之中。位于科罗拉多州奥罗拉(Aurora)的一家初创企业正在对鲨鱼皮的微观组成模式加以利用──鲨鱼皮的独特组成方式，使其比其他动物皮肤具备更强的防菌能力。这家名为Sharklet Technologies的公司目前开发的产品用于医疗设备、家具和厨房台面等。不过，该公司计划在2013年下半年推出应用于手机的产品。