Think you’re a pretty clean person? Your phone could tell you a completely different story.

A group of students decided to see about their phone contacts, and no we don’t mean the address book. Dipping their handsets in Petri dishes, the students got to see just how much bacteria was caught up in their conversations. Amongst the most common bacteria found on your phone? Globules of staphylocuccus aureus bacteria (otherwise known as snot mucous) and bacteria from other people (so even if you’re clean, maybe think twice about who might borrow your handset. The research, carried out at the University of Surrey, also pin pointed the most infectious spot on your phone. After seeing this, you might not want to go ‘Home’. Speaking abou the study, Dr Park, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology, said: “As part of a course called Practical and Biomedical Bacteriology, an undergraduate module that I run, I get the students to imprint their mobile phones onto bacteriological growth Petri dishes so that we might determine what they might carry. It’s unusual but very effective way of engaging our students with the often overlooked microbiology of everyday life.” That’s one lesson they won’t be able to forget for a while.