Why Your Cellphone Has More Bacteria Than a Toilet Seat

Cellphones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats, so it shouldn't be surprising that a man in Uganda reportedly contracted Ebola after stealing one.

He stole the phone from a quarantined ward of a hospital, near the site of a recent Ebola outbreak, reports said.

But regardless of your proximity to an Ebola outbreak, your cellphone is still probably pretty grimy, said Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona.

"They've got quite a bit on them," Gerba said. "When's the last time you cleaned your cellphone?"

While toilets tend to get cleaned frequently, because people associate the bathroom with germs, cellphones and other commonly handled objects — like remote controls— are often left out of the cleaning routine.