The World Health Organization has released some unsettling news about SARS. New laboratory studies show the virus is able survive on common surfaces for at least 24 hours, possibly longer.

One study shows the SARS virus was still living on door knobs and table-tops after 24 hours at room temperature. Another study found that a common detergent failed to sterilize tainted areas.

Scientists believe the studies explain how people can become infected without coming into face-to-face contact with a SARS patient.

Dr. Donald Low, a microbiologist-in-chief at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, reviewed the data with CTV's Newsnet.

"The study shows that the virus can survive on an environment like a plastic surface, potentially a door knob or a button on an elevator. Also, that the agents that we use to clean those environments, that this virus is not always killed by them.

"One of the other things that was reported in the study was that the virus could survive in diarrhea stools for up to four days. So there's lots of information here suggesting that this thing is much heartier than we had expected," Low said.

Research conducted by government scientists in Hong Kong found that the virus could stay alive in diarrhea for at least four days.

Some scientists believe that the study adds weight to the theory that leaky sewage pipes caused an outbreak at a Hong Kong apartment complex. CTV's Scott Laurie asked Low if a similar situation could happened here at home.

"No, that was very unusual circumstance, and the structure of that, the structural defects that were found that apartment complex with a cross contamination of the sewage pipes with water and in drain pipes was really unusual," Low said.

Low, who went through the experience of quarantine during the SARS outbreak in Toronto, said the new studies won't change how SARS is being dealt with in Canada. He said Canadian health officials have already increased the degree of protection provided to health-care workers.

The WHO believes the new information will help health officials develop strategies to contain SARS. Dr. Klaus Stohr, the WHO's chief SARS scientist, said that about 10 per cent of the people who become infected with SARS get diarrhea.

"The most exciting, or perhaps disturbing, finding is that the virus stays alive in feces for as long as four days at room temperatures. That finding is the most disturbing one because it would suggest that fecal-oral transmission could take place," Stohr said.

He also said that Japanese researchers had found that the SARS virus could survive in cool temperatures (4 degrees C.) for four days in cells on plastic surfaces.

"This is fridge temperature, so if someone touches something with a SARS contaminated hand, it would stay for four days on something in the fridge," Stohr said.