The findings: Air-blasted plates carried 18-60 colonies of bacteria on average, whereas two minutes' exposure to the mere bathroom air left fewer than one colony on average. Well, your office hand dryer might actually be spreading fecal bacteria onto your hands and throughout your building. The results were published recently in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Another might be because they don't want to use toilet roll to dry themselves because that's disgusting. This is then dried and sprays on the hands of the user finds that study.
The independent study took place at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.
"Bacteria in bathrooms will come from feces, which can be aerosolized a bit when toilets, especially lidless toilets, are flushed", study author Peter Setlow told Newsweek.
While we might hope bathroom hand dryers are helping to clean and dry our hands, a new study has suggested that they are in fact covering them in poo. The hand dryers apparently not only blow out hot air, they also "suck in" air that's in the bathroom, the article states. And while evidence shows dryers can cover hands in bacteria, they said, it's not certain whether they deposit bacterial spores.
The outcome of hand dryers spreading poo is unlikely to have a serious effect on your health, however, as many day-to-day items, such as mugs and desks, are also covered in germs.
One of the basic hygiene measures is to dry the hands under a hand dryer after using the washroom.
For now, Setlow is sticking to paper towels-as is the University of CT, which has added them to all 36 bathrooms surveyed in the study.