If you're a germophobe who wants to use a public bathroom ever again, you might want to stop reading this.

 

如果你有洁癖，而且平时需要使用公共卫生间，可能这篇文章你根本读不下去。

 

Because it turns out, while bathroom hand dryers¹ can be more environmental than paper towels, they can also be a whirlpool of faecal matter.

 

You might not know it, but when someone flushes an open toilet, little bits of poop and bacteria can be thrown as high as 15 feet (4.5 metres) into the air.

 

As if that's not gross enough, now a new study has found that those little bits of poop and bacteria can be sucked up by warm hand dryers and blown straight onto your freshly washed hands.

 

Researchers at the University of Connecticut began their study by placing petri dishes under various bathroom hand dryers around the school. Then, the team sat down to analyse the results.

 

While the plates that were exposed to normal bathroom air had about one bacterial³ colony present, the samples that were exposed to 30 seconds of hand dryer² air had 18 to 60 bacterial colonies per plate.

 

The researchers concluded that "many kinds of bacteria, including potential pathogens and spores⁴, can be deposited on hands exposed to bathroom hand dryers."

 

"The more air ya move? The more bacteria stick," lead author Peter Setlow explained to Business Insider.

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