Picture of an office desk with a computer. chair Keyboard Table 1 Table 2 Mouse
Keyboard

Your keyboard (RLU 382) is a highly favourable environment for microorganisms, and likely to harbour almost as many germs as your kitchen bin (RLU 392).

RLU (Relative Light Unit) – a unit for measuring cleanliness based on the levels of Adenosine Triphosphate.

Chair

Your desk chair (RLU 310) is home to more lingering germs than your toilet seat (RLU 209).

RLU (Relative Light Unit) – a unit for measuring cleanliness based on the levels of Adenosine Triphosphate.

Mouse

Registering an RLU score of 260, your mouse is home to more lingering germs than your door mat (RLU 173).

RLU (Relative Light Unit) – a unit for measuring cleanliness based on the levels of Adenosine Triphosphate.

Desk

With a horrifyingly high average RLU score of 606, your desk is almost three times dirtier than the standard toilet seat (RLU 209).

RLU (Relative Light Unit) – a unit for measuring cleanliness based on the levels of Adenosine Triphosphate.

Switch to Microscope mode and select an object, to see how filthy your desk really is

microscope mode
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Methodology

Swabs of each surface (desk, keyboard, desk chair, mouse, kitchen bin, toilet seat, and door mat) were taken using Hygiena’s UltraSnap Surface ATP Test, before being analysed using the EnSure Touch monitoring system to determine RLU (Relative Light Unit) results. We used ten different reference points i.e. we swabbed ten of each item, across a variety of locations.

Each RLU reading is based on the level of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) collected from the sample swab. The relationship between ATP and an RLU reading is straightforward:

  1. High contamination (dirtiness/improper cleaning) will lead to large amounts of ATP.
  2. High rates of ATP will produce more light for the EnSure Touch Monitoring System to detect.
  3. The higher the RLU reading, the dirtier the sample is.

Samples with an RLU reading of <50 register as a pass (clean), whereas samples with an RLU reading of >50 register as a fail (dirty). Each object’s RLU score was recorded, and an item’s final total is an average of all failed scores.