CNBC – You might want to think twice before reaching your hands under a hot-air dryer after using a public restroom.
Because you could be covering your freshly cleaned hands — with more bacteria.
A 2018 study conducted a test to determine if hand dryers in public bathrooms could be dispensing bacteria onto people’s hands.
To investigate this, researchers exposed petri dishes to the air in bathrooms in various conditions, and brought the dishes back to their lab to see if bacteria was growing on them.
What they found was that “petri dishes exposed to bathroom air for two minutes with the hand dryers off only grew one colony of bacteria, or none at all,” according to a Harvard Health article written about the study.
“Every time a lidless toilet is flushed, it aerosolizes a fine mist of microbes.”
But, “petri dishes exposed to hot air from a bathroom hand dryer for 30 seconds grew up to 254 colonies of bacteria (though most had from 18 to 60 colonies of bacteria)” …
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