We are a germ-obsessed culture. We abhor all those tiny critters that we cannot see with the naked eye. With good reason: many of them make us sick or even kill us.

We scour everything imaginable with chemicals designed to assassinate the little buggers on contact. We use soaps that contain anti-bacterials. We douse bathroom and kitchen surfaces with products loaded with bleach and other powerful chemicals, even if they’re toxic. We go to bed at night with the comforting thought that those nasty crawly things have been eliminated from our immediate environment.

The bad news: Germs live and breed everywhere. There’s not a surface in the world that doesn’t contain some form of them. Even our computer keyboards.

That’s right: The very thing you’re using to read this article is a cesspool. According to a British consumer advocacy group study, our keyboards are a breeding ground for all sorts of things we don’t want to think about.

In fact, our keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats, the researchers say.

They’re not exaggerating. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta recently reported that an outbreak of norovirus (common known as stomach flu) in a Washington, D.C. elementary school that left over 100 kids sick was likely spread through a computer mouse and keyboard.

“This outbreak is the first report of norovirus detected on a computer mouse and keyboard,” reports the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Before you dip your computer parts into a bucket of bleach, remember that other things we come into contact with all the time, such as door knobs, are equally contaminated. Even that most precious of all human possessions, paper money, is teeming with bugs that can make you vomit or spend the rest of the week on the toilet.

Fortunately, there’s at least one good defense we have against them. Believe it or not, frequent hand washing with ordinary soap (antibacterials aren’t necessary) kills lots of them. It’s even been known to be effective against MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), more commonly referred to as drug-resistant staph.

Who knew that Mama was on to something when she kept telling us to wash our hands?

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian queer atheist performer and writer with a website: www.avicollimecca.com