Scary revelation about hand dryers in bathrooms
New British research shows that the common hand dryers found in bathrooms can spray your hands with dangerous germs, including bacteria that cause deadly blood infections.
New research conducted by the University of Leeds and Leeds General Infirmary (UK), recently published in the scientific journal Journal of Hospital Infection, shows that hand dryers can make your hand washing useless, and can even make your hands a more dangerous germ hotbed than before washing.
Ultraviolet light exposes the terrible filth of hand dryers - photo provided by the research team
The authors evaluated hand dryers in toilets at three Leeds hospitals in the UK, France and Italy over 12 weeks.
The bacteria in the restrooms and the bacteria sprayed onto the hands of users by hand dryers were measured daily. And even though these restrooms were extremely clean and well-cleaned, they still found many families of bacteria sprayed onto users’ hands.
The most common is the Enterobacteria group, the most famous representative of which is E.coli. Bacteria in this group cause a variety of infectious problems such as gastroenteritis, pneumonia, blood infections... Staphylococcus aureus causes skin infections, blood infections and numerous multidrug-resistant bacteria are also found.
Meanwhile, problems such as sepsis, pneumonia, and multidrug resistance have long been known as "nightmares" in the medical industry, causing high mortality rates.
Researchers recommend people dry their hands with paper towels because the amount of bacteria left on the skin is at least five times lower than when using a hand dryer.
The dryer sucks in a lot of air so it can blow it out really hard and dry your hands, and in the process it sucks in a lot of bacteria. Even with the filter blocking it, this bacteria-laden air can make your hands dirtier than before you washed them. In addition, the dryer actively collects bacteria from everyone who uses the restroom and sprays it back around the room, making it even dirtier.
A few months ago, a study by the University of Connecticut (USA), published in the Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal, also discovered that hand dryers sprayed countless harmful microorganisms and even feces onto users’ hands, even when equipped with the most modern air filters. This research group also proposed to equip toilets with paper towels instead of dryers.
