Bathroom hand-dryers suck in poo-particles and aerosolize them all over you and everything else

It’s getting to the point where I really don’t give a shit about anything…Here a shit, there a shit, everywhere a shit-shit. It’s all a bunch of shit in the end really.

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We at least know what kind of filth is on our pant legs.

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I’m afraid that every time you opt in to Receive Bacon, you are agreeing to have aerosolized shit particles blown onto your hands.

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Not if you’re a frood who really knows where his towel is.

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So first let me admit that I haven’t tried to read the scientific paper that is being quoted here and elsewhere. I suspect it is paywalled, which is my excuse, but the real reason is that I’m being lazy.

That said, the media coverage of this has failed to answer the single most important question: Does it really matter?

In other words, is the number of poo particles on your hands substantially different after drying with a hot-air dryer versus using paper towels? Even if it is, does it reach levels that measurably increase risk of illness?

If the answer to either one of those questions is no then this is yet another example of how people are terrible at judging risk. If the answer to either one of them is yes, then it is either yet another example of how scientists are terrible at giving their work context, or it is yet another example of how the media is terrible at reporting on science. I’d have to read the paper to know which, and as I have already explained, I’m lazy. (Does that make me a hypocrite?)

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But if it’s from healthy people, it maybe saves you a fecal transplant.
Thanks, health.
Health?
Oh… Thanks Metal Stuff Chaser! I’m gonna bring some endoscopic cameras, gobos and trust in the fancy veg. carving skills I had Monday, and pyrotechnics, and that gallon o’ lube into that stall and shoot a video! W00! Max effish!

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Yeah everybody has to share that handle on the door exiting the bathroom. Didn’t bother me too much until this week when that entire handle was greasy. It might have been covered with soap. Hard to say but it made me want to find somewhere to clean my hands after leaving the toilets.

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I don’t know what’s wrong with your local media. Offer them some stuff from NY and…yeah.

I suspect it is paywalled.
Mmm…the link went someplace we should go! No gelbooru illustration angles. [Places bet.]

If you want to say that the dryers only blow below the ‘belt’, no you shouldn’t think about it more than a half hour a week. This happens when you have clay dust around or are more than 8 stories tall. I haven’t talked to the restaurant supply about clay dust! Hold my sambucco…

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And they are noisy. I do prefer paper towels but damn, some people use these to trash a restroom.

From my own experience as a recently converted germophobe (induced in recent years by not wanting to accidentally carry any diseases with me on visits to my health-challenged parent): Bring some toilet paper in your pocket out of the stall to dry your hands, and then use that to open the door. If you’re enough of a germophobe (for whatever reason), you don’t care what others think. Blech.

But we just get by however we can, etc.:

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Whilst this article is decidedly ‘icky’, i still find railing against this kind of thing may do more harm than good.

You cannot sterilise the world, and attempting to do so may retard your immune system making you more likely to get sick…

Obviously there’s a balance to be had, but this feels like it may be near one of the extremes…

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My neighbor is a biologist and whenever his kids get dirty he exclaims: good for the immune system!

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I used to drink out of the livestock tank as a kid. I was spreading strep to my entire elementary school every time I used the hallway water fountain. But I never got sick…

Back when I had a ‘real’ job, the HR lady used to ask me if I was signing up for a flu shot. I’d tell her about drinking out of the livestock tank and she would immediately leave.

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At Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, they had a persistent contamination problem. It was eventually traced to the lab sinks. You know, with those high looping faucets that fire a tight stream straight down?

Straight down the drain in fact, where the stream would hit the whatever sitting in the trap, and send an aerosol fog of it out of the sink to settle on all nearby surfaces.

Ooops!

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IIRC, Mythbusters did an experiment with a toothbrush stored in the bathroom. It didn’t matter if the toothbrush was wet or dry, covered or uncovered, stored in a medicine cabinet or on the sink, it ended up contaminated by poo.

So: to echo a previous commenter, does it matter?

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I swear most of ‘you people’ and I mean ‘you people’ wouldn’t last a month if your plastic bubble collapsed. It’s like you’re trying to manufacture high functioning OCD people with posts like this. OMG POOP …IT’S POOP EVERYWHERE! OMG.

Yes…there’s poop, there’s mostly trace amounts poop everywhere…on doorknobs in bathrooms and in the air you breath.

It’s world full of poop. Get over it.

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Thank for the effort, highly appreciated!

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Welcome to the world. Particles are everywhere. Particles of everything that ever lived. You’ll rejoin them soon enough. Go enjoy the day.

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