Bathroom hand dryers blow poop and stuff

A study recently found that bathroom hand dryers are not simply drying your hands after you wash them, they're creating a fertile zone to grow rice and mushrooms. Specifically, they are blowing poop [aka fecal matter] onto your once clean hands, and that makes for good "night soil."

A study at the University of Connecticut (go Huskies!) found hand dryers in both men and women's bathrooms blew crap-laden matter and other disgusting stuff onto hands of the left-leaning students.

The study in the Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal concluded the hand dryers at 36 bathrooms on the campus blew bacteria and s**t onto the hands of users.

The researchers said they put plates under the dryers for about 30 seconds (they used the term 'about' which makes one wonder just how scientific their methods were) and found "between 18 and 60 different colonies of bacteria on each plate."

"These results indicate that many kinds of bacteria, including potential pathogens and spores, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers and that spores could be dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers," the study revealed.

The scientists reported that it wasn't immediately known what "organisms" are "dispersed by hand dryers" and if "hand dryers provide a reservoir of bacteria or simply blow large amounts of bacterially contaminated air, and whether bacterial spores are deposited on surfaces by hand dryers."

"Aaahhhhh!"

My theory is, the spores and crap are distributed via airborne methods, get sucked into the intakes of the hand dryers, and shoot the s**t and bacteria out when unsuspecting men and women dry their hands. In other words, if you can smell it in the air, then it's going to be in the hand dryer.

The research team noted the hand dryers don't have the HEPA [high-efficiency particulate air] filters that come in most Dyson models. But even if they did, HEPA filters decrease, but don't eliminate what comes from eliminating, if you know what I mean.

According to the researchers, the hand dryers may be "responsible for spreading pathogenic bacteria, including bacterial spores" through the entire building. Researches noted Bacillus subtilis PS533 was discovered in every bathroom they tested, and coincidentally at Public School 533.

According to optimist Peter Setlow, one of the study's authors, the bacteria aren't potentially harmful to humans but it shows how easily the bacteria spread, he told Newsweek.

The bathrooms tested are now offering paper towels, which we may eventually discover causes flatulence.


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