You should always wash your hands after using the restroom, right? However, if all the public restroom has are hand dryers, you might think twice.

Handwashing has always been important. Even more so since the pandemic hit. I'd be willing to bet that most people wash their hands more now than they did two years ago. You want to wash all of those nasty germs off of your hands, dry them off, and go about your day until the next time you feel the need to wash your hands. While it's good that people are being hygienic and washing their hands, it's what happens when they dry their hands that becomes an issue.

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Avoid Using Bathroom Hand Dryers

So many public restrooms only offer hand dryers. They can be an easy and efficient way to dry off your hands. However, those hand dryers do more than just dry your hands. By the time you're done reading this, chances are, you might not want to use them anymore.

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According to Newsweek, restroom hand dryers suck up feces particles that are found in the bathroom air and spray them all over your hands. That's poop, folks! See, I told you they were gross. You are washing your hands to get rid of the bacteria, only to have MORE bacteria on your hands after using the hand dryer. The article from Newsweek goes on to say:

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.

How do fecal particles end up in a hand dryer?

Hand dryers are supposed to be more sanitary than using paper towels because you don't have to touch anything to dry your hands off, right? Wrong! That simply isn't the case. According to an article from Yahoo! Life:

Essentially, when you flush a toilet with its lid off, this sends fecal particles whizzing through the air. Hand dryers tend to suck these up, warm them up, and spit them right out again.

This piece of information is something that I knew about for a few years now. However, anytime I tell someone about it, they tend to think that I am full of you know what. In fact, there's scientific evidence that proves that the only thing full of "you know what" is that hot air hand dryer that you use in the bathroom.  So whenever I go into a restroom that has a hand dryer, I'll either opt to use paper towels or just let my hands dry naturally, which seems like a better (and less disgusting) option.

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