This came from my phone.
This is a UV Phone Sanitizer that claims to kill up to 99.9% of bacteria and viruses.
But does it actually work?
For our anniversary this year my wife bought me this HoMedics UV-Clean Phone Sanitizer.
Now I'm not a germaphobe or anything but I do like technology and of course this little
device piqued my curiosity.
It claims to kill UP TO 99.9% of bacteria and viruses in just one minute so naturally
I had to put this claim to the test.
I got on Amazon and purchased this Amazing Bacteria Science Kit...
That's not necessarily my opinion of it; that's just what it's called.
I've linked this kit in the video description if you'd like to get one and conduct some
experiments of your own.
Now I'm not a scientist or anything.
Shocking I know.
But I wanted to do my best not to contaminate my samples so I left the kit sealed in it's
shipping box until I was ready to do my little experiment.
Before getting started I washed my hands really well with soap and water and donned a pair
of latex gloves as well as an N95 mask to keep me from breathing on the agar plates.
Finally I sanitized my desk with a Clorox wipe and I was ready to begin.
I had 5 different samples I wanted to compare so I first labeled all of my plates.
The first two are kind of control plates.
I took the lid off of one plate and just left it open to the air for a minute or so.
The second I used some of the sterile solution provided in the kit on a swab and swabbed
the plate with that just to verify the solution is in fact sterile.
Using a new, clean swab I then collected a sample from my dirty phone and deposited it
onto the 3rd agar plate.
For the 4th plate I wanted to compare the effectiveness of the UV Sanitizer with a known
disinfectant, so I put some isopropyl alcohol on a cotton ball and cleaned the bottom half
of my phone screen really well using it.
After the alcohol had dried I took a sample from that portion of my phones screen and
applied it to the 4th plate.
The 5th and final plate is of course the sample from after using the UV Sanitizer.
To use this HoMedics UV Sanitizer you first expand the top section like so...
unzip it...
place your phone inside...
zip the sanitizer closed making sure the zipper pull magnetizes to this little area here,
and then you simply press the power button and it will run a 30 second sanitizing cycle.
You then open it up, flip your phone over and repeat the process.
According to HoMedics you can get about 70 sanitizing cycles out of a fully charged battery.
Yes, this Sanitizer is battery powered.
It uses an internal rechargeable battery and a USB charging cord is included with it in
the box.
I first sanitized the back of my phone and then the screen side.
My latex gloves were slightly powdered to aid in putting them on and taking them off,
and as you can see the powder got all over the UV Sanitizer.
After a one minute sanitizing cycle however, 30 seconds on each side, I swabbed the top
portion of my phone screen, the part that had not been cleaned using alcohol, and put
that sample into the 5th and final agar plate.
I then placed all my samples into a cardboard box and stuck them in my closet for a week
and here are the results...
The plate left open to the air looks exactly the same as it did before I took the lid off
and exposed it to the air.
I kind of assumed this would be the case but I just wanted to make sure simply exposing
the plates to the air wasn't going to taint my results at all.
The 2nd plate which I swabbed with the sterile solution also appears to have nothing on it.
You can see where I rubbed the sterile solution onto the agar but other than that there's
really nothing of interest going on.
I assumed this would be the result I'd get but just like with exposing the plate only
to the air I wanted to have some proof.
The 3rd plate was of my dirty phone screen, and now we've got something to look at.
It has all kinds of bacteria colonies growing on it.
How dangerous or harmful these bacteria are I don't really know for sure, but I would
assume they're mostly stuff we as human beings are exposed to every single day.
This is why our bodies have an immune system.
To protect us from stuff like this which is surrounding us all the time.
The 4th plate is the sample from the bottom half of my phone screen which I cleaned with
isopropyl alcohol and it looks pretty much identical to the plate I'd only applied the
sterile solution to.
You can see where I swabbed it onto the agar but there are no bacteria colonies growing
anywhere.
This brings us to our 5th and final plate, and just how did the UV Phone Sanitizer do?
Compared to the isopropyl alcohol... not so well,
BUT
when you compare it with my phone screen before being UV sanitized it's much cleaner.
There's only 14 or 15 colonies on the UV Sanitized plate where as before cleaning resulted in
more colonies that I care to even try and count.
Also we have to remember this is from a single 30 second sanitizing cycle on the screen side
of my phone.
Perhaps if I'd run it for a full minute on each side of my phone there would be even
less.
So does this UV phone sanitizer work?
I think the results speak for themselves.
I have to admit I was a little skeptical going into this.
I know that UV light has been proven to kill bacteria and viruses but I didn't think a
30 second treatment from a little device like this was going to be enough to really do much,
and I was wrong.