this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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The bacterial horror of hot-air hand dryers - Harvard Health (www.health.harvard.edu)
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[โ€“] girl@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Petri dishes exposed to bathroom air for two minutes with the hand dryers off only grew one colony of bacteria, or none at all. However, petri dishes exposed to hot air from a bathroom hand dryer for 30 seconds grew up to 254 colonies of bacteria (though most had from 18 to 60 colonies of bacteria).

Is there any good news from this study? Well, the vast majority of the microbes that were detected do not cause disease in healthy people, with the exception of Staphylococcus aureus. Some of the bathroom bacteria, such as Acinetobacter, only cause infections in people in the hospital, or in those with weak immune systems. The others that were found are relatively harmless.

It could. The only way to know is to perform studies. There are approximately 10 million people in the US who count as immunocompromised, and they really could be harmed by a blast of bathroom bacteria.