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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 18 2018, @01:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-ick dept.

http://aem.asm.org/content/84/8/e00044-18.abstract

Hot-air hand dryers in multiple men's and women's bathrooms in three basic science research areas in an academic health center were screened for their deposition on plates of (i) total bacteria, some of which were identified, and (ii) a kanamycin-resistant Bacillus subtilis strain, PS533, spores of which are produced in large amounts in one basic science research laboratory.

Plates exposed to hand dryer air for 30 s averaged 18 to 60 colonies/plate; but interior hand dryer nozzle surfaces had minimal bacterial levels, plates exposed to bathroom air for 2 min with hand dryers off averaged ≤1 colony, and plates exposed to bathroom air moved by a small fan for 20 min had averages of 15 and 12 colonies/plate in two buildings tested.

Retrofitting hand dryers with HEPA filters reduced bacterial deposition by hand dryers ∼4-fold, and potential human pathogens were recovered from plates exposed to hand dryer air whether or not a HEPA filter was present and from bathroom air moved by a small fan. Spore-forming colonies, identified as B. subtilis PS533, averaged ∼2.5 to 5% of bacteria deposited by hand dryers throughout the basic research areas examined regardless of distance from the spore-forming laboratory, and these were almost certainly deposited as spores. Comparable results were obtained when bathroom air was sampled for spores.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @12:21PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @12:21PM (#668539)

    Oh, now you've gone and triggered me... :)

    So, I go to the bathroom, touchless faucet, soap dispenser, and blower -- awesome, green, save mother nature, touchy feely tree-huggy virtue-signalling goodnes.

    Great, now after all that I have to GRAB. ON. TO. THE. FUCKING. DOOR HANDLE with BOTH HANDS and YANK HARD to try to get out of the fucking place. Same door handle presumably used by the guy before me who shot straight out of the stall and went for the door, presumably after having wiped his arse with his bare hands.

    How THE FUCK does THAT even make sense, who comes up with these shit-for-brains designs, is there a place they teach that?

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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday April 18 2018, @04:00PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @04:00PM (#668623)

    Someone will say "those stainless steel door handles are self-sanitizing!" Yeah, except that only works if every single person washes their hands thoroughly before grabbing it with their filthy shit-hooks.

    As I learned from homebrewing, sanitization is only effective if the surface is completely clean.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:06PM (#668639)

    one bathroom on the entire campus where I work has one of these: http://www.stepnpull.com/ [stepnpull.com] which is absolutely awesome: no need to touch the door handle after cleaning one's hands, at all, no matter whether there are paper towels available or not.

    Trying to convince people to install these in more places, on the other hand, seems to be an uphill battle, for reasons I can't comprehend.

    And no, I don't work for these guys, there's lots of others if you google "bathroom door foot pedal" :)

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:39PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:39PM (#668694) Journal

    Wait, so I'm the only one who uses her foot to open the door? Either with a sort of slow-motion crescent kick or simply wedging the toes of one shoe in the handle and pulling back? Huh...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:38PM

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday April 18 2018, @11:38PM (#668757)

    Yep, me too.

    The perfect bathroom has no door. It's an open entry, possibly with a privacy screening turn, hallway that brings you to all the sinks, soap dispensers, and hand dryers. Beyond that, is a series of not-bathroom-stalls, but actual personal bathrooms with a fucking lock, and floor to ceiling doors. At the very top you might put a grill for airflow, but nothing that allows entry, or surveillance. Other nice additions are a medical waste container (a lot more of us have to shoot up something legal these days). There are trashcans, even in the bathrooms themselves, and flushable tissues for those that need it.

    The hand dryers could be a good thing, if the airflow was controlled, MUCH faster, and significantly hotter. By controlled, I mean imagine you putting your hands into the wall. Multiple places, maybe 1 foot across and 6 inches high, at slightly different heights. It acts like one of those air vents you have in a chemistry lab. All of the airflow is maintained within the wall and the hood within. It creates negative pressure in the room, which means that nothing is getting out of those holes. Much easier to maintain and clean on a daily basis. Some HEPA filters, commercial UV, stainless-steel with silver linings in the wall, or some other suitable anti-microbial surface tech. It could even be self-cleaning.

    It's nice, efficient, solves the whole tranny-is-to-scary-to-be-in-a-bathroom-with-me silliness, environmentally friendlier, and is absolutely certain to never be built.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.