Scientists at the University of Arizona tell us that your sick co-workers' germs may be unavoidable.

This is so interesting...Seems half of the most commonly touched surfaces in the office - like the coffee pot handle, tabletops, doorknobs and phones - can become infected with a sick person's germs before lunchtime.

Here's how they found out:

They placed a droplet of water laced with fake cold, flu and stomach flu viruses on one of the 80 office workers involved with the test.

Four hours later, more than half of the office surfaces had traces of the fake viruses, and by the end of the day 70% of the tested surfaces had traces of the fake stomach flu viruses.

Researchers said that the risk of getting sick from one of these fake viruses was between 40 and 90 percent.

A second study showed that in an environment where free tissues, hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes were offered to employees ,the risk of becoming infected with one of the fake viruses went down to 10 perfect.