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It's a normal day. You go out, eat some food and at some point you feel that all too familiar urge to go to the bathroom.
Not to worry!
A public bathroom is right in your vicinity. Even better, it's equipped with a trusty hand dryer so you can dry your hands while minimizing any contact with gross, unwanted bathroom germs.
Or so you thought.
A viral TikTok segment "How Germy Is It" has recently come out to reveal the disgusting truth of showering yourself with warm hand dryer air. And it's not pretty.
See TikTok below:
The clip features an experiment where TikToker @phonesoap uses petri dishes to showcase the amount of bacteria people are exposed to through the use of hand dryers.
In setting up the experiment, @phonesoap compares bacterial growth on petri dishes exposed to different hand dryers with a control — bacterial growth on a petri dish that was vigorously whiffed about in bathroom air.
And the results were well...gross.
@phonesoap first brought the petri dishes back to his microbiology lab where each were incubated for a period of three days. Afterwards, visible bacterial growth was shown in every single dish that was exposed to a hand dryer.
In comparison, the dish that was shook in bathroom air had...none. The clip then wraps up with @phonesoap concluding that bathroom goers should probably opt to shake their hands dry instead.
People in the comments were shook.
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
Others were critical of the results.
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
@itsgoneviral/TikTok
It's important to note that even though the results show bacteria grown in a "closed" environment, bathroom bacteria can easily be spread to anything a person touches — like food. Yuck.
A joint study from Quinnipiac University and University of Connecticut found that most bacteria from hand dryers are sucked out of the air then redistributed to the hands of unsuspecting individuals. This often occurs when toilets are flushed with open lids which causes microbes from fecal matter to be sprayed out into the air space.
While researchers concluded that most of the bacteria found were effectively harmless, microbes from Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile are of high level concern. This is especially true in healthcare settings where many immunocompromised individuals are susceptible to infection.
If you've recently used a hand dryer and have managed to get all the way through this article...your pain is felt.