Posted on 04/14/2018 6:58:30 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
While washing your hands after using the restroom is always recommended hygiene, a recent study might have you thinking twice about using a hand dryer afterward.
University of Connecticut researchers have found that hand dryers suck in bacteria from the air in the bathrooms and then spit it back out onto your hands. And when we say bacteria, we mean fecal matter from the toilet.
"Bacteria in bathrooms will come from feces, which can be aerosolized a bit when toilets, especially lidless toilets, are flushed," study author Peter Setlow told Newsweek.
In the study that was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, "hot-air hand dryers in multiple men's and women's bathrooms in three basic science research areas in an academic health center were screened for their deposition on plates of total bacteria," and what the researchers found was that "plates exposed to hand dryer air for 30 s averaged 18 to 60 colonies/plate."
The University of Connecticut has added paper towels to all 36 of the bathrooms used in the study.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Since when have San Franciscans had a problem with getting someone else’s feces on them?
This is not the 1st I heard of this and in fact letting the room "air out" might be a good idea. What is the potentiality of cross contamination via this airborne stuff in cold and flu season when you go in the room and or use it right after someone who is ill was in their? Their is more to this, however I will not extrapolate any further....
At least you’d be in good spirits.
They didn’t like regular towels so they invented paper towels. They didn’t like the paper towel mess so they invented the air driers. Now...
I doubt it comes from flushing there
One airport restroom had an elegant looking trough for hand washing ( no splash back ) and a wave of your hand triggered via infrared sensors soap and under the faucet hot water. You touched nothing. These devices are nothing new, but the elegance of it installation from a Kitchen and Bath Design standpoint was notable so much I do remember it. You add to the no touch on the paper and the odds increase in your favor. Ditto that not touching a door on the way out if they have the mini-maze to block the view.
Why is it just seeing the words spew and fecal in the same sentence were enough to spontaneously conjure an image of rosie odonut in my head?
Why is it just seeing the words spew and fecal in the same sentence were enough to spontaneously conjure an image of rosie odonut in my head?
So everyone is breathing it in anyway?
When the first person dies or even gets sick from a air blower in a restroom, I’d pay attention to this serious potentially catastrophic health issue...
Yes, and the little grabby thingies at the bottom of the door that you can use to pull the door open with your foot. No need to even touch that nasty ol’ door handle.
The source of the contamination is the very atmosphere you are walking through, and, as it happens,inhaling. So uh, whatever...
Use the WHOP method then. Wipe hands on pants.
With those super-loud, high-velocity dryers, I’ve long wondered how many acoustic decibels they generate when they’re blasting, and how that number compares with OSHA standards for broadband acoustic noise exposure.
We knew this 30 years ago.
This from the city with the most poop piles on the poop map.
So people defecate on the road?
This is why I don’t wash my hands.
Sheldon Cooper: Baby wipe?
Penny: Why do you have those?
Leonard Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz: No, no! Don’t! Don’t!
Sheldon Cooper: I’ll tell you why. I had to sanitize my hands because the university replaced the paper towels in the rest rooms, with hot air blowers.
Penny: Oh I thought the blowers were more sanitary.
Leonard Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz: Why? Please, don’t!
Sheldon Cooper: Hot air blowers are incubators and spewers of bacteria and pestilence. Frankly, it’d be more hygienic if they just had a plague-infested gibbon sneeze my hands dry.
Between that and airplanes, I dont know which is worse.
Get on a plane with somebody sniffling and coughing anywhere on that plane. Guess where that all goes.
I don’t use them. If there are no hand towels I will exit with my hands wet after washing. The trick is to get the door open without touching the door handle.
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