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Hot-Air Dryers Suck In Nasty Bathroom Bacteria, Shoot Them At Your Hands (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hot-air dryers suck in bacteria and hardy bacterial spores loitering in the bathroom -- perhaps launched into the air by whooshing toilet flushes -- and fire them directly at your freshly cleaned hands, according to a study published in the April issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Connecticut, found that adding HEPA filters to the dryers can reduce germ-spewing four-fold. However, the data hints that places like infectious disease research facilities and healthcare settings may just want to ditch the dryers and turn to trusty towels. Indeed, in the wake of the blustery study -- which took place in research facility bathrooms around UConn -- "paper towel dispensers have recently been added to all 36 bathrooms in basic science research areas in the UConn School of Medicine surveyed in the current study," the authors note. The researchers speculated that "one reason hand dryers may disperse so many bacteria is the large amount of air that passes through hand dryers, 19,000 linear feet/min at the nozzle. The convection generated by high airflow below the hand dryer nozzles could also draw in room air."
I spent years cleaning bathrooms - the wrong (or overpopulated) degree will do that to a guy. Let me tell you, people always think for some reason that men are disgusting, nasty pigs. Well. I already had a clue from having had a female flatmate in college, but cleaning toilets was a far more abysmally enlightening experience. Let's leave what happens when drunks and druggies get into a toilet, since that'll be horrible no matter their shape or size...
Men's washroom have droplets from shaking things off too much around the urinal. Once in a while (we're talking per-day here) there'll be a bit of piss on the floor too somewhere.
Both sexes tend to have people who don't flush and/or don't wash their hands. It's unfortunately pretty even. Same with drug paraphernalia.
And then, then there's the women's bathrooms. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy (Obi-wan couldn't have known since he was a man and had never been a toilet-scrubber). First, take all of the problems of a man's bathroom. Yes. All of them. ALL of them. Look at me. Look at me in the eyes. ALL. OF. THEM. Men are not the only ones who piss onto the wall, but at least there was a urinal in the vicinity. Women have no such excuse.
Now add menstrual artwork. Pads and tampons stuck to the fucking ceiling or 'padding' the doors so to speak. Sometimes things clog and you discover someone in the fancy office has been dumping theirs in the actual "fancy normal house toilet" reservoir and at that point you might need the plumber to come by.
Add in maybe one stillborn or miscarriage every... probably once a year back where I worked. It was an office, but would be a lot worse for whoever cleans things up over at a walmart or a mall.
Makeup. On the mirrors, on the dryers, on the toilets, on the floor, it's like a thick incense sometimes and it'll deposit on everything. You don't have dust in women's bathrooms, it's just foundation settling on anything.
Fake eyebrows (eyebrows?!?), the one time I found a fresh placenta hidden behind one of the toilets, half eaten pizza, condoms, so many condoms (maybe twice as much as the men's), sometimes with the zucchini still inside... trails of blood, dropped "mooncups", vomit, so much more vomit than the men...
This was in a relatively professional setting mind you. The guys who work at stadiums and other massive public venues I've talked to had that same distant look that you'd expect from someone with severe PTSD from spending years in a war zone.
Congratulations.
You are contributing the the development of stronger strains of bacteria, while doing absolutely nothing positive for your own health.
This has been well researched, and hand sanitizers are nothing but detrimental, except to the bank balance of the manufacturers.
1 - Unless I am doing it wrong (tm) the parts of their genitals they are likely to touch are not the parts that are likely to contain large numbers of bacteria (unless they are doing something rather odd in the bathroom...).
2 - Genitals are, pretty typically, kept in a reasonably clean place, out of the way of the general rough and tumble of life.
Personally I see a lot of logic in the wash your hands BEFORE going to the toilet way of thinking, because you are more likely to be putting bacteria ON your genitals than taking them off.
Why would I be more worried about bacteria, etc combing from genitals, as opposed to bacteria coming from lets say handling the money they may pay for their meal with? the steering wheel of their car?
Ah, sorry I forgot, you are an American right? such strange people..