This is

the number of mobile phones.

Got a minute?

This year the number of mobile phones on cell networks

is expected to surpass the Earth's population.

More people now own cell phones than actually have access to working toilets.

James Meadow, a microbial ecologist at the University of Oregon.

Hidden in the data is the reality that some people work on their phones on toilets.

If that grosses you out, consider this.

So it turns out that we're just really leaky animals.

We just, we leave our bacteria everywhere we go.

Including, of course, our phones.

Meado and his colleagues took a census of the bacteria on thumbs and index fingers of 17

volunteers and on their smartphone touch screens.

Overall, they IDed more than 7,000 types.

Looking at just the most common bacteria, those that appear more than 0.1% of the time,

they found an 82% similarity between the microbiooms of fingers and phones.

Meaning our phones are a pretty good mirror of ourselves,

microbeally at least.

The results appear in the journal Pure J.

We have always been covered in bacteria and we will always be covered in bacteria.

So the fact that our phones are also covered in bacteria is no reason for concern.

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