I'm a gadget freak. Today I got a new light-gizmo-thing for the top of my news camera, and it made my day. But, I was also reunited with one of my favoritist toys - my lip mic. We use it so the reporter's audio track on our news segments are clean and perfect.

[What's a lip mic?
It's officially called the Coles 4104 Commentator's Ribbon Microphone, but commentators like ABC's Ted Koppel have referred to it on-air as "the lip mic." Designed by BBC engineers in the mid-1950s, the lip mic captures intelligible speech in areas of high background noise, places such as battlefields or in airborne helicopters." (source: Broadcast Engineering)]

It was on loan to my Meredith sister-station peeps, at the RNC this past week. When I got it back, I wondered what a fun and interesting adventure the little guy has had. Who's strange lips had he ("lippy") been dancing resting on? And, the more I pondered my lip mic's Benji-like adventure, my thoughts started get more disturbing. What sickness has been brought back with my microphone?



After putting "Lippy" in quarantine, I hit the Google search bar. There weren't really any stastics for bacteria on lip mics, so I checked into something similar - the telephone. Here's what I found:

"A study conducted by the University of Arizona concluded that telephones can be contaminated with up to 25,123 germs per square inch, and that telephones have 500 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat." [link]

Nasty.

Looks like I'm gonna go buy some more moist towlettes tomorrow on my way to work. And, probably never put that thing next to my face again. But, I better do something soon. It'd be insane to see all of our reporters getting mouth herpes and doing live reports.

[update: There a market for every weird, little niche on the internet. I just found catalogs offering "disposable lip mic hygiene screens". Who knew?]