YSK that restroom hand dryers blow fecal bacteria onto your hands

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 184 points –
journals.asm.org

There was a peer-reviewed report published in the journal for Applied and Environmental Microbiology that studied the amount of bacteria that was blown from hand dryers in 36 public restrooms at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. The sample from the study concluded that as many as 60 colonies of bacteria were blown from a hand dryer in just 30-seconds. A number of those bacteria were linked to fecal and human bacteria, even bacteria known to cause serious infections.

Why YSK: So that you are informed for your own health, hygiene, and wellness and to prevent further spread of more harmful bacteria.

Citation & Sources: "Deposition of Bacteria and Bacterial Spores by Bathroom Hot-Air Hand Dryers" (April 2018), Applied and Environmental Microbiology

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/AEM.00044-18

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Paid for by the paper towel industry which was in response to the hand dryer industry putting out it's own paid study about how paper towels just spread fecal matter around your hands. It's all shit no matter how you spread it.

yeah ther's so much paid propaganda around paper vs dryer that I don't know what to believe anymore.

i personally prefer paper, only because it's usually faster for me.

It makes me deeply uncomfortable to entertain the thought that "the paper towel industry" is an entity out to manipulate me.

So, the best is to bring your towel paper everywhere.

I still prefer towels for how fast they are. The Dyson ones are pretty similar though

I can't remember where I saw this so take it with a grain of salt... But I remember that the set of studies to come out on the sanitary condition of air dryers was funded by the paper towel industry. Not that the studies aren't correct or anything, but I do think that it's something to consider.

You should also know that when they test for fecal matter they aren't looking for actual pieces of poo they are looking for bacteria that are present in poo. You will find those bacteria just about everywhere

I heard once that the only way to stay properly clean is to cover yourself in mountain dew.

I'm pretty sure that regardless of where you are or what you're doing, fecal matter is getting blown on your hands. Mythbusters tested this out once by putting tooth brushes all over their shop and then culturing the bacteria from them. IIRC the ones that were in the bathroom had the least amount of fecal matter.

The thing I remember is that even the control toothbrush that got opened and immediately locked away had fecal bacteria on it.

If the blower is blowing fecal matter then it would also be settling all over the paper towels. Issue is placement not anything to do with the blowers.

Almost every public restroom I've ever been in has the paper towels and toilet paper locked in a closed dispenser unit.

oh those are definitely not sealed or protected from the air in the bathroom anymoreso than a hand dryer is. Not to mention many paper product replacements are stored elsewhere in or at least near the same bathroom

Oh noes! You better not even breathe in the bathroom, you might die!

Luckily paper towels are stacked though, so I’ll just avoid wiping my hands with the folds.

Bathrooms should just have a unisex hand washing station away from the toilets. May not work well for older buildings but new developments can implement that easier

i like this idea a lot and perhaps people would wash their hands more if the fact that walking past them and not doing so would broadcast the very fact they dont wash their hands

There is a bar/arcade near me that has their sinks right outside both bathrooms in full view of all the patrons, and I think it would definitely encourage people to wash their hands since everyone can see you leave the restroom, especially considering it’s a place where people are touching everything

Literally everything in the restroom is covered in that... Including the air you breathe. Enjoy!

Smell is particulate. You can smell the last guys poo because little pieces of it are landing in your nostrils.

You're smelling mostly the scatole. That's the primary contributor to the smell of faeces.

Scatole is used in making perfumes, incidentally. And vanilla ice cream.

Welcome to Scatoles. I recommend our Pasta Crappini with homemade Feces Bread. Ciao!

I thought it was mostly the gaseous molecules some of the bacteria on poo emits that's landing in your nose, not the poo itself.

It's not easy to convey important information when it comes to biology IMO.

Yeah we breath in fart and poop "particles" all the time, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I don't know about the idea that every time you take a breath you inspire some molecules from when Ceasar said "et tu mon Brutus", or any other inspiring phrase, but also from one of Hitlers farts.

Molecules are small, really small and there are really many of them.

Our immune system works really hard, crazily hard even, and it's not a simple mechanism (we basically don't know how it works) but if you want to know if a fan blowing air or towel or a one usage towel is good or bad (or obviously how they influence our wellbeing) you have to do a real study. By scientists, and not by news looking "journalists".

BTW fact of the day to throw you off: there are somewhere around 600.000 cells that divide in an adult human body every:

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second.

Cheers

Today, we are all ships of Theseus 🫑

Well yes, but no.jpg

The heart is extremely bad at regenerating, classic muscles the opposite for example.

Then let's not get started on consciousness and memories plus our physical body, which is who we are today (or 'now')...

So somehow yes.

And good night I'm off to sleep !

Yeah if there is nothing but blowers I just wipe my hands on my pants. If the blowers could somehow bring in outside air that should be better, but that complicates the install and maintainence.

Just wait a minute and your hands will dry on their own. Ideally you used soap and rubbed them together under the water long enough so they are clean. You did, didn't you?

what part of that post made you think he wasn’t washing his hands? the part where he described how he dries them?

Well you did, and I did. But think about how many did not, when you open the bathroom door after meticiously washing and drying your hands...

You don’t wash your hands. Your hands wash each other and you watch.

1 more...
1 more...

Well, it's from your (and other people's) hands, onto everywhere.

Still, AFAIK it's not clear if this is a problem.

Only wash my hands and flush the toilet in public restrooms that have touch less sinks. If the toilet isn't automatic, I use my foot. Use the paper towel you wash your hands with to open the door on the way out or your sleeve if you have long sleeves on, or your elbow if it's a push door. I'd rather have my own dick on my hands than my own and everyone else's.

If the sink isn't hands free you just walk out?

Yep. Turning the sink off is just as bad as turning it on. You just put everyone's dick right back on your hands.

So you just don't touch anything in public, ever?

I do, just try to avoid other people's dicks and use hand sanitizer a lot. Sounds like you have a problem with this there, dickhands. Does that mess with your fetish or something?

But hand sanitizer is only 99.9% effective. You still have millions of other men's dick germs on your hands, on your keyboard, in your mouth.

You cannot escape the dicks. No matter how unbathed you are.

Dicks.

Dicks.

Dicks.

Now they're in your eyes.

Just do what I do and wipe your hands on your pants because those blow dryers are virtually worthless. I'd have better luck blowing on my hands myself.

Bonus: My pants aren't covered in fecal mist... I hope.

Narrator voice: "They were"

Basically everything is covered in fecal matter of you look well enough, and it doesn't really matter. It's really good for selling disinfectant though!

I don't care about that. What's worse for me is that the Dyson ones are so damn loud. It's a pain having to hold one arm over your head in the stall to cover both ears.

Well I have to touch the door on the way out any way so it really doesn’t matter that much.

Still cleaner than the doorknob. I hate opening a restroom door. The stuff I touch going in will land on my genitals, on the way out everywhere else, like my face and food.

God I never gave that a second thought but they're right, its just sucking in and blowing farts onto my clean hands

didnt the mythbusters do an episode about keeping your toothbrush in the bathroom where their control toothbrush which just existed in a little glass dome for the duration of the test still ended up having the same bacteria thats present in poop as well?

Which is why food service workers are required to dry hands on disposable paper towels.

Where is that the requirement? I've worked several food service jobs and they only had air dryers.