Watch out! Lift buttons 40 times filthier than toilet seats

A study carried out in hotels, restaurants, banks, offices and airports found 313 'colony forming units' of bugs on every square centimetre of lift button. The equivalent surface area of toilet seat had only eight units.

The bacteria on the lift buttons could include stomach bugs such as E.coli, researchers say, according to the Daily Mail.

Nicholas Moon from Microban Europe, which carried out the research for the University of Arizona in the US, said: "In a busy building, a lift button can be touched by dozens of people who will have come into contact with all kinds of bacteria every hour."