Handdryers Just Spray Your Hands With Poop Particles: If You Live In New York You Already Live In Poop Particles So Stop Complaining
Washing your hands is one of the easiest ways to stop the spread of germs, right? Well, your office hand dryer might actually be spreading fecal bacteria onto your hands and throughout your building.
“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. The simple movement of lots of people in and out of the bathroom, shedding microbes from their skin, he said, adds to the messy picture.
Hand dryers suck up bathroom air and spew it out at speed. So, in the brief moments your hands rest below the nozzle, they’ll be exposed to far more air than usual—and far more bacteria.
Full story here.
Yikes! Not great! Are we supposed to start using paper towels now? We're just going to go back to killing all of the rainforests huh. Using the hand dryer was my big environmental impact thing! You know that and making an effort to find a recycling bin when I’ve got to get rid of a bottle. I’m not saying that I’m hoarding my plastic bottles, waiting for a blue bin to magically appear; but I definitely give every room I’m in a good 45 second scouring before sending that empty gatorade bottle to a landfill. I'm kind of an environment-conscious guy.
Same goes for paper towels and hand dryers. I’m a proud hand dryer only person. If there’s a hand dryer available, I’m using it. Jokes on me I guess, I’m just poop speckling my hands in the name of nature. I’m not even a 100% hand washer. That’s big of me to admit. Take a minute to appreciate that. I’m not pretending to be something I’m not to save face. I’m fully confessing that sometimes after peeing I just run the water and use the hand dryer. It feels nice, or I guess it felt nice. Jokes on me I guess. I’m just taking the germs that I’ve already declined to rinse off and I’m layering them with even more poop germs from other people. That’s terrible. This fucking city (New York) has turned me slowly but surely into a germaphobe, and this isn’t helping. You’re basically telling me that there’s just poop everywhere.
To play devil’s advocate against myself, when I really think about it- New York is the only place where this doesn’t really matter. I gave up on having non-poop hands a long time ago. The air here is poop. At this point I just consider washing my hands as fighting a losing battle. Between the subways, the uncontained trash spilling out on the street, the rat takeover, and so much more, you’re just fucked germ wise. I dapped a guy up yesterday who looked like he may have had leprosy. I’m not making fun of him. I’m just saying that I might have leprosy now. If you live in any other place, this news is a huge bummer. If you live in New York City, dirtiest city in the country, this is just a little more poo in a poo world.
