The wretched hands are washed out as the only way to fight the most fear of the universe coronavirus. Another technique could also be useful to secure ourselves: the phones must be sanitized so that the benefits of washing your hands don’t inadvertently become compromised.
“The same way your hand may have been contaminated, your phone may have been contaminated,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, told Mashable.
It’s possible to sanitize your smartphone with antibacterial wipes. However, human error and damage to the phone’s surface make the slightly higher tech option of cleaning your phone with UV light a good way to go, too.
But considering that studies show that we pick up our phones hundreds of times a day, we could be undermining our best hand washing efforts. By checking Instagram or sending a text say, after we’ve washed our hands, but before we pick up a burger we could be putting those germs lurking on our devices right in our pie holes.
“We call our phones the third hand you never wash,” Dan Barnes, the co-founder one smartphone sanitizing company, PhoneSoap, told Mashable. “Unless you treat your phone the same way as your hands, it’s hard to keep all three clean.”
First of all, take preventive measures with your phone the same way you would with your body. Klausner recommended that during times of heightened potential for infection, don’t share your phone, and definitely don’t hand your phone to a sick person.
If you do want to go the UV route, there are options from several vendors, all with different bells and whistles. PhoneSoap makes a few different models, some meant for use on the go, some to be stored at home.
A company called Verilux makes a UV light wand that you wave over your smartphone, LEDMEI’s UV phone chamber doubles as ambient room lighting, and one from Yasolote comes with an essential oil diffuser.
But as public officials are still trying to get a handle on basic information and testing for coronavirus, UV light phone cleaning could be one additional futuristic tool in your pocket.
