The Unexpected (And Shockingly Gross) Reason To Avoid Using Hand Dryers In Public Bathrooms

People can be gross. They wipe their noses with their hands and then grip door handles on their way in and out of the public bathroom. Their loose shoelaces drag through puddles of unmentionables on the bathroom floor, and they don't notice. But at least — at least — they wash their hands. Maybe. And they use no-contact, no-waste hand dryers to blow all that pesky H2O away. And in so doing, their hands get blasted with a storm of fecal fury. Enter the final horror of public bathrooms: the bacteria-blowing hand dryer.

Yes, it's true — hand dryers suck in noxious air and blow it onto your hands. Back in 2018, a study published in the American Society for Microbiology found that petri dishes left inside a sample of 36 public bathrooms for two minutes produced one colony or less of bacteria each. But petri dishes left under hand dryers for 30 seconds produced up to 254 colonies of bacteria per dish. Researchers found 24 strains of bacteria total, including the spore-forming Bacillus subtilis found in the human gut. That means poop.

But what does this mean for travelers needing to hit the bathroom, or toilet users as a whole? Well, if you don't care about this revolting revelation, then godspeed to you. If you do, then your solution is simple: Don't use the hand dryers. And if you're worried about how you could possibly dry your hands without fancy hand dryers, have no fear. Evaporation will take care of the water in minutes, although wet hands spread bacteria more readily than dry hands. Or, pack some travel tissues in your pocket. Beyond this common-sense item, there are tips and hacks to keep you clean in public bathrooms.

The best strategy for staying clean in a public toilet is the one we already mentioned: Don't use the hand dryer. Even those cloth drying rolls are more hygienic than hot air-blowing hand dryers, as the physical movement of rubbing cloth against your skin helps remove bacteria. Paper towels are also more sanitary, as they don't blow bacteria across the room.

You can also use the cleanest bathroom possible, or at least the ones with the fewest people. This will reduce the sheer volume of grossness lingering in the air and on surfaces. Granted, there's no telling what disasters might have occurred even in the toilets of the fanciest Parisian restaurants. But if you make sure to use the toilet in a restaurant or hotel before leaving, you'll at least cut down on rushed trips to the bathroom in the wild. And if you're traveling across Europe, you can always duck into a bathroom on a train, as travel author Rick Steves points out, although overall cleanliness can't be guaranteed. But you can at least take advantage of the cost of your train ticket. 

Planes don't have hand dryers, either, but do come with their own cleanliness tricks, like not brushing your teeth inside plane bathrooms. Even the water on a plane might be contaminated, so you might need to resort to some bacteria-killing hand gel (although hand sanitisers will dry out your skin) and avoid the need to dry your hands altogether. Ultimately, you'll never be able to escape the disgust of other people, their habits, and their bodily byproducts, but you can sure try.