Here's The Gross Truth About Bathroom Hand Dryers

[vellavu]

Ew ew ew ew ew.

Here's The Gross Truth About Bathroom Hand Dryers

If you're a germophobe who wants to use a public bathroom ever again, you might want to stop reading this.

Because it turns out, while bathroom hand dryers can be more environmental than paper towels, they can also be a whirlpool of faecal matter.

You might not know it, but when someone flushes an open toilet, little bits of poop and bacteria can be thrown as high as 15 feet (4.5 metres) into the air.

As if that's not gross enough, now a new study has found that those little bits of poop and bacteria can be sucked up by warm hand dryers and blown straight onto your freshly washed hands.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

That is disgraceful, it is almost as bad as the one that tells that if you want to be a person of faith
you need to let Jesus enter you. But therein lies a problem as them religious types say gay men
will go to hell.
I suppose that means I'm going to go there for saying that, I don't mind though as I'm a witch.

 

[Steven123]

Just imagine the one's I use at service stations....thousands of people per day..., I may have to hold it in a bit longer now haha

 

[thetopher]

I somehow instinctively knew this since I've always been against those hand-dryer things.
Instead I use tissues or something that I carry around with me.

Or, y'know, just wipe my hands on a passing random stranger whilst making a disgusted face. That works too. 🙂

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

I don't use dryers b/c about a third of people don't wash their hands, and I need paper to turn the water on and off, and paper to open the door to the restroom that has fecal matter from people who didn't bother washing as well as whatever has flown around...

of course, if it is flying around, remember this... when you (or other people) flush, it's also going on you, and you are breathing it in. There's aerosolized fecal matter, blood and urine on EVERY surface of the bathroom.
Move on... it's life.

Unless you're in an OR, there are no sterile surfaces (and even then, at least some parts of the place are crawling with microbes, because we are all human microbe transport systems). There is no such thing as 'clean'. There's only degrees of dirty. You want to get your hands as clean as you can. I recommend re-washing hands outside of bathrooms if you can, and drying with paper and using paper to open the door to the rest room. Some restrooms have foot openers you can use to open the door by hooking your foot under.

Touching restroom door handles undoes what you did when you washed your hands.

so, never touch them... and if you must have really clean hands, for food prep or medical/scientific jobs, wash your hands again once outside the bathroom... kitchen or lab sink for example, or if you're in public, use alcohol sanitizer. You should probably avoid touching public building entry door handles too...

IMPORTANT: Unless you have a compromised immune system, a little bit of 'dirt' is good for you, necessary, even. In fact, not challenging your immune system regularly will actually cause it to WEAKEN. Not being exposed to some microbes will actually make you less healthy over time.

 

[Mrs Gordo]

Oh well... I have lived this many years with poopy hands what’s another 50 yrs or so with poopy hands? 😵

 

[ILLYRIAN]

You may like to take note of some vermin that eat their waste pellets, benefits does come from that practise. It is the bacteria from the bowels being returned that help protect the body from illnesses.

PS
I hope your mealtime wasn't ruined.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Anyone know where they are wired into the mains 'cos I just got a job of washing them.

 

[Soulfrag]

I don't use public bathrooms, so this doesn't bother me in the slightest.