How many times have you been told to wash your hands after going to the bathroom? Over and over, we are told that one of the best ways to stay healthy and not get sick is wash your hands after using any bathroom, especially a public one.

I once worked with a germaphobe. He always used his elbow or butt to push open the bathroom door at the office we worked in. That bathroom had auto-sensor flushing toilets and sensor activated sinks. They had sensor activated hand towel dispensers and he would always use the paper towel to open the bathroom door when leaving. He did everything possible to not touch anything in the bathroom. A number of us used to think he was weird but the more one studies just what happens in a public or office bathroom, he doesn’t seem as weird any more.

People who are sick use public bathrooms on a regular basis. They touch the door handles and in many bathrooms, they touch the toilet seats, flush handles and faucet handles. In bathrooms that have sensor flushing and sink faucets, you don’t have to touch them, but nevertheless, germs – bacteria and viruses are still present in the bathroom. They are in the air just from other people breathing, coughing and sneezing. Did you know that when you flush a toilet, it causes air to circulate up from the running water and that air carries water droplets along with bacteria, viruses and worse yet, feces? The more people that use the public bathroom, the more germs and feces in the air.

Kind of makes you hesitant to use a public bathroom, doesn’t it?

After you wash your hands in a public bathroom, you generally grab a paper towel to dry your hands. If the towel dispenser has a handle you have to push, pushing it may just have undone the hand washing you just did.

If the towel dispenser is like the one in the office building I used to work in, the paper towels were dispensed via a motion sensor, you are spared being re-contaminated by having to crank out the towels.

However, more and more bathrooms are using hand blowers in stead of paper towels. It’s cheaper in the long run for the company but are they any more sanitary than towel dispensers?

According to a new report, they are far more unsanitary than towels:

“Restroom hand dryers don’t just blow — they also suck. When they hoover up air, they also siphon in bacteria, which includes microbes carried into the room on people’s skin, and those left behind by waste after a person uses and flushes a lidless toilet. Then, after sucking these microbes up, the dryers spew them out again — in abundance, according to a recent study…”

“Previously, studies have shown that hand dryers can move bacteria from hands into the air, and have even suggested that they could contaminate newly washed hands with bacterial deposits, the study authors reported. To investigate that, they exposed 36 glucose-coated plates in public restrooms — first with the hand dryers off, and then with the hand dryers on — and then checked the plates for bacterial growth.”

“For tests conducted when the hand dryers weren’t on, the researchers found little evidence of bacteria — an average of six colonies per plate. But when the blowers were up and running, so were the bacteria, with as many as 60 colonies, on average, growing on each plate. The researchers checked inside the dryers to see if internal microbial buildup could be playing a part. But though they found some bacteria when they swabbed inside the dryers, it wasn’t nearly enough to account for the amount distributed by the dryers’ airflow.”

Is there any solution to this problem? Make sure you go to the bathroom before leaving home and do your best to hold it until you get home. If you have to use a public bathroom, the only way to protect yourself is to wear a hazmat suit and filtered air breather.