Irma

托福閱讀 練習小短文- 手機是細菌孳生溫床 (化學學科) 

常看英文文章就會非常習慣他們的文章架構，除了標題之外，通常第一段的第一句就是貫穿全篇文章的主題。因此從下面標示出來的話就可以了解，這篇文章就是在說明有關智慧型手機因為清潔不足所以常常成為病菌孳生的溫床，以及如何避免這樣的情況而進行一大段說明與舉例。其實這段文章內容也算是常見的國際性報導內容，所以不難理解相關內容和理解。

文章內容：

When you combine a cellphone's proximity to your ears, nose and mouth with its bacteria-loving warmth, the result can be harmful to your health. This hazard, says Jeffrey Cain, the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians and chief of family medicine at Children's Hospital Colorado, often goes unnoticed. 'Some things we think are personal are actually more public than we imagine.' Viruses from a phone can cause flu, pinkeye or diarrhea, says Dr. Cain.

For people who want to keep a clean touch screen, there is a disconnect between what doctors and medical researchers advise and what device makers suggest for phone sanitizing.

While products are marketed specifically for mobile-phone cleaning, they can sometimes damage the phone's screen coating or fail to remove 100% of the germs.

Even though computers, keys, pens and landline phones can harbor germs, many people's cellphones have become extra appendages─never far from the pillow, health club treadmill or restaurant table.

'We're feeding the little creatures,' says Michael Schmidt, a professor and vice chairman of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina. 'We've all seen that greasy smear [on the touch screen]. Where there is grease, there are bugs.'

 A lab tested eight randomly selected phones from a Chicago office for this article. The phones showed no signs of E. coli or staphylococci bacteria. But all phones showed abnormally high numbers of coliforms, a bacteria indicating fecal contamination. Of the eight phones tested by HML Labs of Muncie, Ind., there were between about 2,700 and 4,200 units of coliform bacteria. In drinking water, the limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water.

 'The results are pretty bad,' said Dr. Donald Hendrickson, president of HML Labs and professor emeritus of medical microbiology at Ball State University. He says the results suggest a lack of hand-washing and proper hygiene.

HML then tested four different cleaning methods, including water, alcohol, Windex Original glass cleaner and Nice 'N Clean electronic cleaning wipes. Alcohol performed best, cleaning nearly 100% of the bacteria. Plain water proved to be the least effective method of the four.

Emily Evitt, 29, who lives in Culver City, Calif., and works as an intellectual property attorney, says she wipes down her computer keyboard and work phone each morning, but she hasn't found a solution for her iPhone that both cleans well and won't harm the screen. 

'I see people at the gym with their iPhones and think, 'Ugh,' ' says Ms. Evitt, who avoids taking her phone to the gym but brings it with her to work lunches. Ms. Evitt's husband, Mark, who founded a website called The Manly Housekeeper, wipes down the couples' phones with alcohol on the back cover and with water on the front.

  'People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom,' says Dr. Cain of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

 'These are the unintended consequences of new technology that we haven't seen before so we don't know all the risks yet,' he says.

Phone companies caution against using most household cleaners─which can leave phone owners like Ms. Evitt in a bind.

It's really problematic because a lot of manufacturers don't tell you what coating is on the phone,' says Dr. Schmidt. 'It's hard to tell if an alcohol wipe will strip the oil-repellant coating and damage the phone screen.' Screenmaker Gorilla Glass, a provider to more than a dozen smartphone brands, says one of its screens has an easy-to-clean coating that will 'survive repeated wiping.'

 An Apple spokeswoman directed a reporter to the customer manual, which explicitly forbids the use of 'window cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia or abrasives.' BlackBerry's advice is similar. Its manual states: 'Do not use liquid, aerosol cleaners, or solvents on or near your BlackBerry device.' A spokesman for Google Inc.'s GOOG -0.46% Android says the various manufacturers for its phone platform don't carry an official policy on cleaning methods. Company representatives for the Android, BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones all said that they don't have particular brands to recommend for cleaning. 

Boh Ruffin, a senior applications engineer at Corning Gorilla Glass, says standard off-the-shelf cleaning products, such as alcohol wipes, won't degrade the performance of the glass, though he wouldn't speak to smartphones' performance directly. 

'The only thing that's going to affect the glass is some type of hydrochloric acid,' says Mr. Ruffin. 'Microfiber cloths work great to remove oil and dirt.' Such phone-cleaning cloths usually boast about a 99% success rate, which Dr. Schmidt says isn't good enough. 'For some of the bacteria, you only need to ingest as few as 10 organisms to get sick.'

 There is scant research on cellphone germs and their effect on the body, according to Dr. Cain. One 2011 study sampled the cellphones of 100 college students and discovered them to be 'veritable reservoirs of pathogens' that can make you sick. The study authors, from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, noted the high concentration and diversity of bacteria on the phones. A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology the same year warned that some 20 to 30% of viruses can be readily transferred from a fingertip to a glass surface, like that on a touch screen.

  Standing outside the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, Marci Hollandsworth, a mother of four and self-described Purell hand sanitizer devotee from the suburbs of Chicago, says her family passed around a series of infections all summer, including several colds and pinkeye.

She believes the culprit was the family's four cellphones. 'It's really disgusting,' she says. 'We are big Windex people for our iPhones and iPads. Anything that will sanitize our gadgets but not smell like a janitor's closet, we use.

' A spokeswoman for S.C. Johnson, which makes Windex, notes that its glass cleaner isn't recommended for electronics, though they do offer a line of cleaners intended specifically for electronic devices.

Derek Meister, a tech support agent from retailer Best Buy's Geek Squad, suggests a UV disinfectant wand as the best cleaning solution because its light rays kill germs without touching the phone. Creators of a new product called PhoneSoap say it uses UV-C light to clean the phone while charging it, and that the device will begin shipping to consumers in January 2013. 

簡譯:

  打電話時，手機需要與你的耳朵、鼻子和嘴親密接觸，這時手機的溫度也恰好是細菌所喜歡的。這兩個因素合在一起，其結果足以傷害你的健康。據美國家庭醫生學會(American Academy of Family Physicians)會長、美國科羅拉多州兒童醫院(Children's Hospital Colorado)家庭醫學科主任傑佛瑞•凱恩(Jeffrey Cain)稱，這一危害往往會被忽視。

  凱恩博士表示，“一些我們以為很私人化的東西實際上對公眾所造成影響比我們想像中要大。”一部手機上的病菌有可能引發流感、傳染性結膜炎或者腹瀉。 那些希望保持自己手機觸屏清潔的人會發現，在這一點上，醫生和醫學研究人員與手機設備製造商所給出的建議並不一致。雖然市場上有些商品在廣告中自稱是專門用來清潔手機的，但這些產品有時候可能會破壞手機螢幕上的塗層，或是無法百分之百地殺除細菌。儘管電腦、鑰匙、筆和固定電話也可能成為細菌的棲息地，但對於許多人來說，手機儼然已經成了身體的一部分：枕邊、健身房的跑步機上或是餐桌旁，手機與他們總是寸步不離。

  南卡羅來納州醫科大學(Medical University of South Carolina)微生物學和免疫學系副主任邁克爾•施密特(Michael Schmidt)教授說，“我們是在餵養這些小生物，我們都見過（手機螢幕上的）油污。有油漬的地方，就有那些小蟲子。”手機會損害你的健康。位於印地安那州曼西市(Muncie)的實驗室HML Labs為本文作者進行了一次測試，八部從芝加哥某辦公室裏隨機抽選出來的手機參與了這次測試。這些手機均未顯示出攜帶有大腸桿菌或是葡萄球菌的跡象。不過所有的手機都顯示帶有大量大腸菌群，其數量之多已超過正常範疇。帶有大腸菌群意味著受到了排泄物污染。在這次測試所檢驗的八部手機上，大腸菌群的數量約在2,700個到4,200個單位之間。而根據飲用水標準，每100毫升飲用水的大腸菌群數量不能超過一個單位。 

  HML Labs總裁、波爾州立大學(Ball State University)醫學微生物學榮譽退休教授唐納德•亨德里克森(Donald Hendrickson)說，“這個結果相當糟糕。”他指出，這樣的結果意味著手洗得不夠勤，以及缺少適當的衛生措施。之後，HML對四種不同的清潔方法進行了測試，包括用水擦、用酒精擦、使用Windex Original玻璃清潔劑以及用Nice 'N Clean的電子設備清潔濕巾擦拭。結果顯示，酒精的效果最好，幾乎消滅了100%的細菌。四種方法中，單用水擦的效果最差。

  現年29歲、家住加州卡爾弗城(Culver City)的知識產權律師艾米莉•埃維特(Emily Evitt)表示，她每天早上都會擦拭一遍自己的電腦鍵盤和辦公電話，不過她還沒有找到合適的方法來清潔她的iPhone手機，能夠在不傷害螢幕的前提下，讓手機變乾淨。埃維特說，“我看到人們在健身房還隨身帶著自己的iPhone，我就想‘天呐’。”埃維特不會把手機帶進健身房，但在吃工作午餐時，手機卻是隨身攜帶的。

  埃維特的丈夫馬克(Mark)會用酒精擦拭倆人手機的背面，用水清潔手機的正面。馬克創建了一個名為“男管家”(The Manly Housekeeper)的網站。

  美國家庭醫生學會的凱恩博士說，“手機讓人們患病的概率不亞於洗手間的門把手。他說，“這是新科技所帶來的人們意想之外的後果，這種情況我們以前並未碰到過，因此對其全部風險，我們尚不十分瞭解。”手機設備製造商們提醒人們不要使用多數的家用清潔劑，這讓像埃維特這樣的機主對於手機清潔問題束手無措。

  施密特博士說，“這的確是個問題，因為許多製造商並不告訴你手機上的塗層用的是什麼材料。我們很難判斷，用酒精擦拭是否會破壞防油塗層，並損害手機螢幕。

  ”為十幾家智慧手機品牌生產手機螢幕的Gorilla Glass表示，他們生產的手機螢幕中，有一款所使用的塗層便於清潔，能夠“經得住反復擦拭”。當記者問到蘋果公司(Apple)時，該公司一位元女發言人要記者參考用戶手冊，而用戶手冊中明確寫著“請勿使用窗戶清潔劑、家用清潔劑、噴霧劑、溶劑、酒精、氨水或腐蝕性溶劑來清潔iPhone。”黑莓(BlackBerry)手機的建議也是類似。黑莓的用戶手冊上寫道：在黑莓設備本身及設備附近，請勿使用液體或氣體清潔劑及溶劑。穀歌公司(Google)旗下安卓(Android)品牌的一位發言人表示，在如何清潔手機方面，使用其安卓平臺的各家手機製造商並沒有一個官方的政策。安卓手機、黑莓手機和iPhone這三類智慧手機企業的發言人都表示，他們沒有哪個牌子的清潔產品可以推薦。

  康寧公司(Corning)旗下Gorilla Glass的高級應用工程師博•拉芬(Boh Ruffin)表示，標準的現成清潔產品，比如說酒精濕巾，不會降低該公司所生產這種玻璃的性能，不過他不願意直接就其將如何影響智慧手機性能做出評判。拉芬表示,“唯一會對這種玻璃造成影響的是某些種類的鹽酸。超細纖維的布能夠很好地清除上面的油漬和灰塵。

  這類手機清潔布通常自稱能夠99%的清除汙物，但施密特博士表示，這還不夠。“有一些細菌，只要有區區10個進入人體內，就足以致病。” 據凱恩博士稱，目前有關手機上的病菌以及這些病菌對人體影響方面的研究還很欠缺。在2011年進行的一項研究中，100名大學生的手機接受了檢測，結果發現，這些手機是“不折不扣的病原體倉庫，”足以讓人生病。此項研究由加納海岸角大學(University of Cape Coast)的研究人員實施，他們在研究報告中指出，手機上的細菌密度很高，所帶病菌種類也很豐富。同一年發表在《應用微生物學期刊》(Journal of Applied Microbiology)上的一項研究報告警告稱，大約20%到30%的病菌能夠輕易地從指尖傳到玻璃表面，比如手機觸屏之上。

  在芝加哥密歇根大街(Michigan Avenue)蘋果店的外頭，四個孩子的母親、來自芝加哥城郊的瑪莎•霍蘭斯沃斯(Marci Hollandsworth)說，整個夏天，她們一家人接連幾次因交叉傳染而生病，包括患了幾次感冒和結膜炎。霍蘭斯沃斯說自己是Purell洗手液的忠實用戶。  她認為罪魁禍首是他們家裏的四部手機。她說，“真是可怕。我們經常在我們的iPhone和iPad上使用Windex品牌的清潔產品。任何清潔劑，只要能夠幫這些設備消毒，而且不會聞起來好像清潔工的櫥櫃，我們都會用。”

  Windex產品製造商S.C. Johnson的一位女發言人指出，不建議消費者將該公司的玻璃清潔產品用於電子設備，不過他們確實生產了一個產品系列，可以專門用於電子設備。零售商百思買(Best Buy)的極客服務平臺(Geek Squad)的技術支援人員德里克•邁斯特(Derek Meister)推薦使用一種紫外線消毒棒，他認為這是最佳的清潔方案，因為這種消毒棒所發射出來的射線可以在不接觸手機的情況下殺死細菌。

  一種名為PhoneSoap的新產品的發明者表示，這種設備可以在手機充電時，使用C波紫外線來對其進行清潔，此設備將於2013年1月開始投入市場。新的行業解決方案或許也在醞釀之中。位於科羅拉多州奧羅拉(Aurora)的一家初創企業正在對鯊魚皮的微觀組成模式加以利用──鯊魚皮的獨特組成方式，使其比其他動物皮膚具備更強的防菌能力。這家名為Sharklet Technologies的公司目前開發的產品用於醫療設備、傢俱和廚房臺面等。不過，該公司計畫在2013年下半年推出應用於手機的產品。