Cell Phones, Staph and Superbugs and My Sick Child

As reported by Breitbart, a new study shows that cell phones used by hospital staff may spread bacteria, including the superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), often called Staph. The spread of bacteria is particularly dangerous in the hospital setting. When patients already are sick, they are more vulnerable. They may become sick through bugs that are generally harmless for healthy people. In hospitals, bacteria can easily slip into wounds or be introduced by catheters and ventilator tubes. Can bacteria sharing happen with cell phone use in other settings?

Teens and group cell phone use

If you are the parent of a teen, no doubt you've seen a group of teen-agers passing a phone around. They all want to "say 'Hi'" to the same person and whoop it up over whatever it is about what they are doing at that moment that seems very important.

My young teen, for example, goes skating just about every week. Every week, the teens end up phoning their friends who didn't make it to the rink. Phones get passed and passed around in circles.

The phones quickly change hands. They are pressed up against the next face and the next face, close to the next mouth, nose and ear. All this while those using the phones also are chomping on gum, crunching on ice, blowing bubbles, belly-laughing and otherwise generally not remembering Mom's advice to "not talk when your mouth is full."

Before cell phones were ubiquitous, there really wasn't any object used on a regular basis that was passed quickly from hand to hand and pressed quickly up against one's face. The face, of course --- meaning the eyes, ears, nose and mouth --- is the precise entry point for most of the bacteria and viruses that make people sick with nasty colds, flu and illnesses such as mononucleosis.

The immediacy of the contact between cell phone users is important . Many times pathogens are not passed on only because they do not live very long outside the body. So, shorten the time between possible contact and the rest is history.

In the pre-cell phone era, how often did a group of eight people, for example, use the same phone, one immediately after the other? And how often were the old-style phones actually mashed against a person's face or have the speaker directly at the person's mouth?

Cell phone use and spread of infection

It just makes sense that cell phone use, wherever it occurs, would increase the opportunities for bacteria and viruses to, literally, change hands. (And change noses, mouths, ears and even eyes.) It happens in hospitals. It can happen elsewhere. Certainly the consequences in a hospital setting potentially are more dire. But cell phone-spread bacteria and viruses can take aim at a group of teens, for example, just as easily.

Recently, a large group of young teens we know all became quite ill within the same time period. Most of the kids had flu-like illness, some with vomiting. Some of the kids had upper respiratory tract infections. All had bouts of high fever. These kids had not eaten the same food or even eaten food from the same source. Their illnesses generally lasted one week to ten days.

It was clear to the parents that the group had been exposed to the same bug at about the same time. But these kids were home schooled. They only saw each other once a week. At the skating rink.

Sharing phones, sharing bugs

Later, I read the news story about cell phones in hospitals harboring and spreading infection. The light went off.

Sure, our group of kids could have passed around a bug just by socializing. Nevertheless, based on how they shared phones, it clearly seemed reasonable to conclude that this also had greatly upped the chance that someone in the group could spread an infection .

This group of young teens had engaged in serial cell phone conversations. The phone---and then a number of different phones later---went immediately from hand to hand many times over, over and over again throughout the evening.

Besides getting mononucleosis the old-fashioned way (through honest-to-goodness kissing), if someone in the group had a bug that could spread, it was hard to think of a more likely scenario for that spread to occur than this serial cell phone-sharing. Even conjunctivitis, commonly known as "pink eye," might get boosted throughout a group this way.

What's a parent to do?

Children do get sick and they often expose each other to cold, flu and other bugs. The key in every situation is to understand the risks involved and, if needed, to take reasonable measures to manage those risks.

If your child is already showing signs of bacterial or viral illness, such as cold or flu, you might consider limiting phone sharing among friends for a while. This protects your child from picking up something else while he is already on the ropes. It also helps minimize the chance your child's illness will be picked up by other kids.

Another time to take steps to limit "public" phone sharing might be when you know "something is going around" among your child's group of friends or at church or school. Sharing a cell phone, at least the way most kids use them, isn't all that different from drinking after someone---and most kids understand why that's not a good idea when sickness is going around.

If you have a child whose immune system is compromised by a medical condition, or as a result of taking a biologic drug, such as Enbrel, Remicade or Humira, this is another situation where it may pay to be more careful about serial cell phone-sharing.

Cell phones, Staph and superbugs, and my sick child

Again, the concern here is not so much the occasional use of someone else's phone. It is about situations in which a group of people --- say, several teen-agers --- talk on a phone, pass it to the next person, who then talks on it and passes it on to someone else.

As you can see, this type of serial cell phone-sharing potentially puts several people in quick and close contact with the germs left behind by several other people. That creates a giant increase in the chance of picking up any sickness one person in the group may have.

As always, besides taking reasonable steps to avoid exposure to pathogens, hand washing remains the number one way to protect yourself from getting ill. Hand-washing also goes a long way toward protecting your friends and family from catching a bug from you.

*** Are you concerned about Staph infection? Check out: Consider Adding Aspirin to your Arsenal to Fight Staph.

Sources:

"Cellphones may spread superbugs in hospitals: study," Breitbart.

Chris Matyszczyk, "Cell phones helping spread hospital superbugs?," CNET News.