A TikToker Tested Hand Dryers In Public Washrooms For Bacteria & It'll Make You Think Twice

You've probably used a hand dryer in a public bathroom at a movie theatre or at a shopping mall, but a new TikTok video may make you reconsider ever using them again.

TikTok user @the_lab_life1, whose account says she's a Master of Science student and frequently posts videos from a lab, shared a video showing her testing several public hand dryers to see how much bacteria they expose a person to.

"Finally testing hand dryers," she posted on the video alongside a trigger warning in her caption.

The video shows the student holding a petri dish under several hand dryers, including one at a shopping mall, a movie theatre and at work.

She also conducted a test by waving a petri dish around in a public bathroom to get a comparison of the bacteria you expose yourself to when air drying your hands.

She then allowed the dishes to incubate before checking back to see the results and she expressed that she was shocked by what she found.

The TikToker showed each petri dish that had bacteria growing and pointed out that the UV light on the hand dryer at the movie theatre clearly didn't help.

The results from her workplace seemed to be the worst.

So, what is the best option? According to her video, the TikTok user shows that air drying your hands is the way to go as the petri dish came back with no bacteria.

In one of her comments, the TikToker clarified that it's not the hand dryer that has all the bacteria, but "all the bacterial aerosols from the bathroom are basically being pushed onto your hands."

The video has received over 27 million views, nearly 3 million likes and thousands of comments since she posted it on the social media platform.

Many people were shocked by the results.

"Questioning all the times I used the air dryer😳" one person commented, while another simply said, "NOOOO."

Others weren't surprised by the findings.

"This is why I don’t dry my hands in hand dryers," one person wrote.

Some people also thanked the woman for doing a "public service" and exposing the gross truth about something so many people use.

"You’re doing the lords work thank you," one TikTok user wrote.

This isn't the first time hand dryers have been tested.

In 2018, the University of Connecticut and Quinnipiac University conducted a study on hot-air hand dryers in public restrooms and the findings were just as unfortunate.

According to an article by Harvard Medical School written about the study, petri dishes exposed to hot air from a bathroom hand dryer for 30 seconds "grew up to 254 colonies of bacteria (though most had from 18 to 60 colonies of bacteria)."

The scientists concluded in the study that most of the "bacterial splatter" from the hand dryers came from the air in the washroom.

How did the bacteria get into the air? If you guessed that it came from flushing the toilet without putting the lid down, then you were right.

The Harvard article still recommends that people dry their hands after washing them. The most hygienic way to do that it says is by using a paper towel.

Based on these findings alone, next time you're in a public washroom, you may want to stay away from that hand dryer.