Hot-air dryers suck in nasty bathroom bacteria and shoot them at your hands

[sl8]

From https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/flushing-toilets-launch-germs-and-hot-air-dryers-aim-them-at-your-hands/

Hot-air dryers suck in nasty bathroom bacteria and shoot them at your hands

Air filters can help, but healthcare and research centers may want to stick with towels.

BETH MOLE - 4/6/2018, 2:28 PM


Researchers found these spewing bacteria and spores. | Alisha Vargas

Washing your grubby mitts is one of the all-time best ways to cut your chances of getting sick and spreading harmful germs to others. But using the hot-air dryers common in bathrooms can undo that handy hygienic work.

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.

FURTHER READING
Using a Dyson hand dryer is like setting off a viral bomb in a bathroom [Updated].

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More at link.

[elocs]

1. Sheldon Leonard on hot air dryers:

[link:http://

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[ProfessorGAC]

2. Some Of These Restrooms Now Have. . .

. . .this hurricane force dryer. I was in a restroom at the urinal and a guy about 6 to 8 feet to my right started one up. My pant legs were moving at the cuffs. Yeah, the bounce off the walls and floor were moving my pant legs from at least 6 feet away!

That seems excessive.

[MontanaMama]

3. Yuck!

Just got back from a 3 week international trip and the Dyson dryers were everywhere...especially in airport bathrooms.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. If paper towels are unavailable

I will dry my hands on my trouser legs before using those turbo-blast microorganism distributors.

[Trailrider1951]

5. Where do the bacteria come from that these things spew at your hands? Right here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666014/

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Our results and those of previous investigators present a consistent body of data that demonstrates the potential for generation of infectious droplet nuclei bioaerosols when a contaminated toilet is flushed. Pathogens including Shigella, E. coli, Clostridium difficile, SARS coronavirus, and norovirus (Thomson 1955; Caul 1994; Atmar et al. 2008) can be present in vomit or stools of infected persons and can survive on surfaces for weeks or even months (Kramer et al. 2006). As has been shown, hundreds to thousands of potentially infectious bioaerosol particles, capable of remaining airborne for extended periods and migrating with air currents, may be generated in a single flush of a toilet contaminated with these organisms. Whether a subsequent bioaerosol exposure results in disease would of course depend on the organism's viability under existing environmental conditions, the number of organisms inhaled and their virulence, and the exposed person's immune status among other factors (Cox 1987), but it is difficult to imagine that such transmission is not occurring. Separating the incidence of disease transmission by contact and droplet routes from that by the airborne route is a challenge that remains to be met.

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Please lower the lid (if there is one) before flushing!